Helicopter from Miami to Royal Island

The harbour is the reason the island works without a runway at all. It is close to enclosed, with a narrow opening on the south side and low brush covered ground around the rest of it, which is what makes it one of the most protected deep water anchorages in the Bahamas.

Boats have used it as a hurricane hole for generations, and yachts still lie in it through a blow that would move them anywhere else. From the air on the way in it reads as a dark pocket cut into a pale island, and it is the first thing anybody points at.

Where a boat is meeting your party in it, say so at the enquiry. Where the harbour is the whole point of the day, the water side of it runs through water toys and the island guide sits on the Royal Island destination page.

Outside the harbour the island carries more than ten miles of ocean frontage and white sand on most sides, which is a lot of coast for 430 acres. The beaches face different ways, so there is almost always one out of the wind.

The middle of the island rises well above the water, high enough that the view takes in the whole northern end of Eleuthera at once: Spanish Wells and Russell Island to the east, the Bight to the south and open Atlantic north.

A beach picnic goes on the sand, catering or a private chef comes with the flight, and a golf cart is the only transport the ground needs.

Eleven nautical miles east of the harbour is Dunmore Town on Harbour Island. Its pink sand beach is the single thing guests ask about most in this corner of the Bahamas. By air it is a few minutes.

By water it is a longer and more careful trip, because the passage between The two runs along the reef covered in its own tab below. A party that wants both usually takes the private ground first and the pink sand late, when the light on it is worth more.

Where the beach is the centre of the day rather than the island, Miami to Harbour Island by helicopter is the direct version of this crossing. Say which of the two is the point when you send the date: it changes the routing rather than the price, and it is easier to fix before the itinerary is written than after.

Five nautical miles east across the sound is Spanish Wells on St George's Cay, a settlement of a little over sixteen hundred people that runs the largest commercial fishing fleet in the Bahamas.

The boats are steel hulled, sixty to over a hundred feet, and the crawfish season sets the rhythm of the whole town. It is a working harbour rather than a resort strip, which is exactly why people go and look at it.

Golf carts are the transport, the walk from the dock is short, and lunch is the reason most parties cross. It is the counterweight to a private island with nobody on it: a party that wants one half of the day empty and the other half with people in it can have both inside twelve miles.

The north shore of Eleuthera carries a shallow ragged reef called the Devil's Backbone. It has taken dozens of ships, and it is the reason boats running from Spanish Wells to Harbour Island usually take a local pilot for the passage rather than reading the water themselves.

From a helicopter it is the best looking part of the arrival, and it is the part this aircraft shows better than anything else we fly: pale sand, dark coral heads and the wrecks that did not make it, all of it under a cabin with glass on every side and none of it far below you.

That contrast is the honest argument for this route. A piece of navigation that costs a boat a pilot and a careful hour costs you a few minutes of the view, which is what scenic flights over this stretch are booked for on their own.

Southwest of the harbour, where Current Island nearly touches Eleuthera, the whole tide of the Bight squeezes through a gap about a hundred yards wide and sixty feet deep. On the strongest tides the water runs through it at up to ten knots. Divers ride it rather than swim it.

The channel is over a kilometre long and the drift is finished in ten to twelve minutes, which is short enough that most boats simply carry you back and do it again. Eagle rays, reef sharks and big schools of jacks hold in the flow.

It is not a beginners' dive and the window for it is narrow, so it is worth naming when you send the date rather than after. The rest of the water side of a day here runs through island hopping.

Nine nautical miles west of the harbour is North Eleuthera and behind it the top of the long island itself. Preacher's Cave is there: an open limestone cavern with natural chimneys in its roof, where the Eleutheran Adventurers sheltered after wrecking on this coast in the sixteen hundreds.

Further south the island narrows to the Glass Window, where dark Atlantic water on one side and the pale Bight on the other are separated by a few yards of rock. The natural arch there broke in the hurricanes of the nineteen forties and a concrete bridge stands in its place.

Both are a short drive from the airport, and both are the reason a party that came for a private harbour ends up spending half the day on Eleuthera. Where the top of the island is the point rather than the island off it, Miami to North Eleuthera by helicopter is that day.

A helicopter charter to Royal Island also works as the first leg rather than the whole day. The same aircraft carries on to Nassau about forty miles southwest, Grand Bahama, Andros or Staniel Cay and the Exumas, and once you are cleared into the Bahamas the second leg is domestic. That is what turns one island into a wider Bahamas day.

Overnight changes the baggage rather than the route, and anything outside the usual list goes to custom requests. The packaged version of the day is the Royal Island getaway day trip, a table rather than a boat is a fly and dine day, and the rest of the chain is on the Bahamas destinations page.