Helicopter from Miami to Tilloo Cay

The north end of the cay is where the day tends to start, and Tilloo Cut is the reason. It is the narrow pass between the lagoon and the open Atlantic, and it separates this cay from the beach at the southern tip of Elbow Cay, ten minutes away by tender.

On a falling tide a long white bar lifts out of the water on that side, and standing on it is what most parties come for. At high water there is nothing there at all. The tide rather than the calendar is the thing worth naming when you send the date: the window runs a few hours either side of low.

From the air the whole of it reads at once, which is the part this aircraft gives you that a boat cannot: the pass, the bar and the colour either side of it. A beach picnic goes here, and water toys earn their place on an afternoon spent between the sand and the boat.

The south end is a national reserve, eleven acres of Atlantic shoreline held by the Bahamas National Trust since 1990. A private family gave the land on the condition that it stay wild, and it has.

It is a seabird site before anything else. White-tailed tropicbirds nest in the eroded rock along the ocean side, with yellow-crowned night herons and terns on the same stretch, and the shoreline is recognised as an important bird area.

No trail, no warden, no sign. It is a place to look at rather than to land on. The exposed side takes the swell straight off deep water with no reef to slow it, so the boats stay on the lagoon side and the walk starts from there.

Halfway down the shoreline the land opens into Tilloo Pond, a natural harbour on the lagoon side with a few hundred feet of frontage and room to lie out of the through traffic. It is one of the reasons boats know this cay at all.

Ten minutes south of the cut it is far enough from the busy anchorages to be silent, and close enough that a tender covers the distance without anybody planning the day around it. If a boat is meeting your party rather than a berth, say so at the enquiry. A yacht transfer is arranged with the flight, and a dock pickup covers the other direction.

Behind the cay and through the shallows below it the water runs shin deep over pale sand for miles, and chart depths across much of the Sea of Abaco read in single figures of feet. That is bonefish water and the other half of why anglers come to this end of the chain.

Parties book bonefishing and flats access or a full fishing day. Rods and gear travel, within the payload for the aircraft on the day. Rays and small sharks work the same edge on the tide, close enough to stand with in ankle deep water. That is the version of this the children in the party remember.

A short run south the water becomes the Pelican Cays Land and Sea Park, twenty one hundred acres of it, protected since 1972 and run by the Bahamas National Trust. Coral heads, patch reefs and undersea caves sit shallow enough that snorkellers and divers are looking at the same thing from different depths.

Nothing is taken out of it, which is the trade: the fishing happens outside the line and the looking happens inside it. Say when you send the date whether anyone is diving rather than snorkelling. At this end of the Abacos a dive boat and a snorkel boat are not always the same boat, and there are not many of either.

Nothing about this cay is serviced. No ferry runs to it, so the thirty or so people who live here move by boat, and the houses are private and spread thin along a shoreline that is mostly bush. That is the point of the day rather than a limitation of it.

Reaching somewhere this quiet and leaving it again between breakfast and dark is a rare thing, and it is exactly what the aircraft is for. Guests who want a table rather than a beach book a fly and dine day. Anything outside the usual list goes to custom requests.

Straight across the cut and three miles up the shore stands the red and white striped tower at Hope Town, built in the 1860s and still turned by hand. It burns kerosene and a keeper winds the weight every couple of hours through the night, which makes it one of the last of its kind anywhere.

It is the obvious half day off the cay and the reason a lot of parties ask for two stops rather than one. The pastel houses under it, the harbour and the ocean beaches on the far side are all within a walk of the dock.

Helicopter rides Miami Tilloo Cay also work as the first stop rather than the whole day. The same aircraft carries on to Man-O-War Cay, Great Guana Cay, Treasure Cay or Marsh Harbour on the Great Abaco shore, about four miles west. 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, that is a yacht transfer and it is arranged with the flight rather than found on the day. Anything larger than luggage is a different service altogether, and that is island logistics.

The full island guide sits on the Tilloo Cay destination page, the packaged version is the Tilloo Cay getaway day trip, the region is on the Abacos page and the rest of the chain is on the Bahamas destinations page.