Helicopter from Miami to Compass Cay

This is what the cay is known for, and it happens at the marina dock rather than somewhere a boat has to take you. The sharks in the basin are nurse sharks, a bottom feeding species that is docile around people, and the ones here have been fed and named by the marina staff for years.

They are big enough to be worth a photograph. Grown adults commonly run close to ten feet and the species lives around 25 years, so the animals in that water are residents rather than visitors. The jetty was built with steps down to a low tide platform, which means a party can meet them from dry land and only the swimmers get in.

They are still wild animals and the marina sets the rules, not us. Say how many of your party are getting in the water when you send the date.

The cay is bigger than it looks from the dock and none of it needs a boat. Crescent Beach lies behind the marina, about ten minutes on foot, and it is the beach most parties end the afternoon on. There is a proper set of trails for an island this size.

The Jungle Walk runs west towards the sunset side and the quieter beaches, the Bat Cave sits at the south end, and Compass Peak, the high point at roughly 92 feet, is a short climb with the whole chain laid out from the top.

Rachel's Bubble Bath, a lagoon that froths where the ocean swell pushes over the rocks into it, is the other thing people walk to.

All of that is the half of a Compass Cay day that needs nothing arranged. It is also the half that survives a morning when the boats stay in.

The swimming pigs live on Big Major Cay, an uninhabited cay a few miles south, and the run there from the Compass Cay dock is under ten minutes by boat. They are the single most photographed thing in the Exumas and the reason a good number of parties come down the chain at all.

Big Major has no airstrip and no dock worth the name, so it is reached by water whatever you fly in on. That is the argument for making Compass Cay the base of the day: the boat leaves from the jetty your party is already standing on.

A dock pickup is arranged with the flight rather than negotiated on the beach, and a beach picnic goes on the sand at the far end of the same run.

Staniel Cay is the hub of this part of the chain and it is about eight miles south. It carries the runway, the yacht club, the two grocery stores and the fuel dock, so a boat afternoon usually touches it at some point: there is no fuel at Compass Cay itself.

It is also the reason the aircraft matters here. A runway arrival lands at Staniel Cay and then needs a boat north for the last eight miles, at whatever hour the boat is free. A helicopter does not owe the day to a runway at all, which is what the rest of this page is about.

Guests who want a table rather than a boat book a fly and dine day, and the packaged version of the neighbouring cay is the Staniel Cay getaway.

The grotto is a hollow limestone cave off Staniel Cay with holes in the roof that drop shafts of light onto the fish underneath. It takes its name from the Bond film that was shot inside it and it has been on every Exuma itinerary since.

The current runs through it, so it is swum at slack water rather than whenever the day allows. That is the one part of an Exuma day set by the sea rather than by the aircraft, and it is worth naming when you send the date so the boat is booked for the right hour.

Dolphins are the other thing people ask about and they are the one that cannot be booked. Sightings near Compass Cay run highest from April into June, and nobody arranges them.

Bitter Guana Cay is a low cay south of Staniel with pale cliffs behind the beach and a colony of Bahamian rock iguanas on it. They are endangered, they are protected and they come down to the sand when a boat lands, because visitors have been coming for years.

It is a beach stop rather than a place to spend a day, so it sits in the same loop as the pigs and the grotto. Nothing there is fed by hand: the rules are the park's and the guides know them.

The chain keeps two sunken aircraft from the smuggling years of the 1970s, and both are snorkel depth rather than dive depth. The nearer one lies in shallow water off Staniel Cay, broken up enough that the wings and the fuselage sit apart on the sand.

The better known one is further north off Norman's Cay, where the snorkellers and the divers are looking at the same thing from different depths. Pipe Creek is the other direction, the run of small cays and cuts immediately north of Compass Cay.

At low water it dries into open sandbars in the middle of the sea, and that is where a party goes when the plan is nothing at all.

It is also the last thing under the aircraft on the way in. Add water toys if the afternoon is going to be spent on the water rather than on the sand, and anything outside the usual list goes to custom requests.

Helicopter rides Miami Compass Cay also work as one leg rather than the whole day. The same aircraft carries on to Staniel Cay, Exuma, Nassau, Harbour Island or Andros. That is what turns one cay into island hopping or a wider Bahamas day.

An overnight changes the baggage rather than the route, and a date that has to look like something is where the catering on board and the rest of the extras come in. What goes in the back is weighed with the party rather than counted against a rule, and the baggage guidance sets out how that works.

If a yacht is meeting you in the anchorage, that is a yacht transfer and it is arranged with the flight rather than found on the day. The protected basin here takes vessels up to about 180 feet, so a good number of these flights exist because something big is already tied up.

Anything larger than luggage is a different service altogether, and that is island logistics. The full island guide sits on the Compass Cay destination page, the packaged version is the Compass Cay getaway day trip and the rest of the chain is on the Bahamas destinations page.