Private Plane Charter Miami to Gun Cay

Gun Cay has no airstrip, so the flight ends nine miles north of it. South Bimini Airport is public, it takes this aircraft, and the Bahamian customs authority lists it among its ports of entry, which means the clearance happens in the building beside where you stop rolling rather than at some airport you never wanted to visit.

What that buys a private party is the morning. A flight that has to clear somewhere else first loses an hour and a landing to it, and on a crossing this short an hour is the whole difference between a day and an overnight.

The paperwork is filed before you leave Florida, so the walk from the aircraft to the far side of the desk is usually a matter of minutes. From there the rest of the day is water, and nobody is holding a return time over you.

Between the strip and the sand there is a boat, and this is the leg that decides whether the day feels arranged or improvised. Ask for it at the enquiry and it is at the dock when you arrive, with the crossing timed around your landing not around whoever happens to be free.

It runs down the lee of the chain in water that goes from deep blue to a pale green you can read the bottom through. Parties who have only ever seen the Bahamas from a resort beach tend to go quiet for the first few minutes of it.

Ask for ground transport between the apron and the dock at the same time and the two ends join up without anybody making a phone call on the morning. Because your aircraft is not going anywhere, the boat can wait if the afternoon runs long, which is the opposite of how this works when the return flight is somebody else's.

The bay at the north end of the cay is the reason most parties come. It is shallow enough to stand in well out from the beach, the sand is pale and the southern side of the bay is a proper strip of it rather than a ledge.

Southern stingrays come in close here, along with starfish and conch, and the occasional nurse shark further out. It is the sort of place that works for a family with small children and for four adults who wanted somewhere with nobody else on it, which is a rare combination.

What it does not have is any infrastructure at all, so what your group eats and drinks there comes with you. A beach picnic is arranged with the flight rather than found on arrival.

A stone tower has stood at the south end of the cay since 1836, put there to mark the passage for shipping running between the deep water and the bank.

It is one of the oldest working landmarks in this part of the Bahamas and it is visible from the air on the way in. It is not a visitor attraction and there is nothing built around it.

That is rather the point: the south end of Gun Cay is rock, scrub and a lighthouse, and a group that walks down to it has the whole thing to itself. Parties who want it in photographs usually ask the boat to run the shoreline rather than landing, because the view from the water is the better one.

The channel between Gun Cay and its neighbour is one of the standard ways boats get from the deep water of the Straits onto the Great Bahama Bank. Cruisers use it constantly, and behind the cay there is an anchorage that holds in most conditions.

For a party arriving by air it matters for one reason: it is why this cay is on anybody's map at all. Everything that happens here, the anchorage, the rays, the boats that stop for an afternoon, happens because the cut is here. If the day is built around a yacht at anchor rather than the beach, this is where it will be sitting.

The shallows around the cay and the bank behind it are bonefish water, and bonefish water runs on the tide rather than on the clock. That is a problem on a scheduled return and it is not one here. Tell us at the enquiry and the departure is set around the water not around an airline. What a flats day involves is its own page.

The next island south is a private club, so the marina, the houses and the airstrip are for members and their sponsored guests. For everyone else it is a stop seen from the water, and it is worth seeing. It matters to this page for one practical reason.

It appears on the same Bahamian ports of entry list as South Bimini, so a party whose whole trip is built around the club not around the cay can be cleared in there instead, and that is a different routing with a different page: Cat Cay by private plane. For a day at Gun Cay it is simply the island on the other side of the cut.

Some groups want the cay in the morning and something with a bar in it afterwards. Bimini is nine miles back north, and since the aircraft lands there anyway the detour costs nothing but hours you already own.

Alice Town on the north island is where the hotels, the marinas and the dive shops are, and a golf cart is the way people get around it.

What there is to do once you are there belongs on the Bimini destination page rather than here, and a day built around lunch somewhere specific is a fly and dine day. Anything more particular than that is a custom request and we would rather hear it early than well.

Gun Cay is often the first stop rather than the whole trip, and clearing in at South Bimini is what makes that simple: once your party is through the desk, every leg after it is domestic. An aircraft that belongs to you for the day can string those legs together in any order you like.

Grand Bahama, Nassau, Harbour Island, Andros and Staniel Cay and the Exumas all take the same type, and none of them require going back to a hub first.

That is the shape of an island hopping day or a longer Bahamas day; a single cay and back is a Gun Cay day trip. The full list is on the Bahamas destinations page.