Private Jet from Miami to Long Island Bahamas

The one thing on this island that is famous everywhere is a hole in the sea floor. Dean's Blue Hole lies in a sheltered bay on the west coast a few miles from Clarence Town and drops 663 feet, about 202 metres. Very few blue holes anywhere go deeper. The shape of it is what surprises people. The opening is only some thirty metres across, small enough to swim over in a minute, and it widens underneath into a cavern of roughly a hundred. Two strides off the sand the bottom stops being there. Freediving records have been set in it and the beach around the rim still has nothing built on it. It sits at the southern end, so on a day trip it is the reason to arrive early rather than late. Say when you send the dates that the blue hole is the point, and the ground transport waits at Stella Maris with the drive already planned. Parties who want the whole day in water book it through adventure tours.

The island finishes at Cape Santa Maria, and the beach running south from the point is the one that puts Long Island on best-beach lists: miles of white sand on the sheltered western side, with the water going out flat and pale instead of dropping away. That western shore is the calm side, which is why nearly everything on the island faces it. The Atlantic side takes the weather and the swell and is a different island on a windy day. For a party landing at Stella Maris this end is minutes from the ramp, which makes it the half day when the arrival runs late. This is where a beach picnic goes, and where an afternoon in the water rather than on the sand adds water toys. Say how many are swimming when you send the date.

Clarence Town is the island capital and sits on a natural harbour at the southern end, some eighty miles down the road from Cape Santa Maria. It is a small settlement with an unusually large skyline for its size, and the reason is two churches. Both have twin towers and both are the work of one man, Father Jerome Hawes. He built St. Paul's as an Anglican priest and then, after becoming a Roman Catholic, built Sts. Peter and Paul on the hill opposite. They face each other across the town. Guests who want the history walked rather than pointed at book it through cultural tours.

Long Island was the third island Columbus reached in 1492 and he renamed it Fernandina. The Lucayans living on it already had a name for it, Yuma. A monument to the landing stands at the northern end, near the cape and near the field the jet uses. The present name came from sailors rather than from a map: the island took so long to sail past that the length became the name. Eighty miles against four at the widest makes that point better than the monument does. It is a quiet place rather than a monumented one, and the wider historical side of a day here runs through cultural tours.

The island is limestone all the way down and hollow in places. Hamilton's Cave, in the middle of it near the settlement of the same name, is the largest cave system in the Bahamas, and it is walked rather than dived. Lucayan artefacts have been found in these caves, left by the same people who were living here when Columbus arrived and who had their own name for the island. That makes the cave the older half of the island's history and the monument at the north end the newer one. It is inland, so it suits a day that already has a car in it and pairs obviously with a morning at the blue hole, both under adventure tours.

Where the day is about fish, the wading flats here lie unusually close to where people stay. Guests who fish this island talk about being in the water minutes after leaving the room rather than after an hour in a boat. That is a function of the shape of the place: eighty miles of shoreline, a shallow bank along the whole western side and settlements strung out along it at intervals, so the flats are never far from the road. Parties book bonefishing and flats access with a guide arranged in advance. Rods and gear travel with the aircraft, and anything outside the usual list goes to custom requests.

Salt Pond sits in the middle of the island on the sheltered side, and it is where the boats are. The Long Island Regatta is sailed here in Bahamian sloops: wooden, single masted and raced hard. For a party arriving by air the harbour matters for a plainer reason. It is the middle of the island, so both ends are reachable from it in a morning, and it is where a boat can meet you. If a yacht is meeting you that is a yacht transfer, and a dock pickup covers it when the boat is already tied up.

A private jet charter from Miami to Long Island Bahamas also works as one leg rather than the whole day. Once the aircraft has cleared into the Bahamas the cruising permit is in hand, so George Town in the Exumas is a short hop from the north end, and Rum Cay, San Salvador and Cat Island are short legs from here as well. That is what turns one island into island hopping or a wider Bahamas day. Out here the airfields are quiet and the schedules are few, so having the aircraft to yourselves is often the reason the trip happens at all. An overnight changes the baggage rather than the route. Where the next stop has no paved runway the last leg runs on a seaplane or a helicopter, and freight that will not travel in the cabin goes separately as island logistics. The full island guide sits on the Long Island destination page, the packaged version is the Long Island getaway and the rest of the chain is on the Bahamas destinations page.