Seaplane from Miami to Grand Bahama

The island is limestone the whole way down, so the water people come for is as much under it as around it. Lucayan National Park sits on the longest charted underwater cave system in the world: seven miles mapped so far, running out under the pine forest and the mangroves. Ben's Cave is the one most visitors see.

Sixty feet of water, the top thirty fresh and the bottom thirty salt, with the two layers meeting in a line you can watch from above. Certified divers book it through the registered operators. Everyone else walks the boardwalks over the five ecosystems the park was made for: beach, mangrove, hardwood forest, whiteland coppice and the caves themselves.

Say whether anyone in the party is diving rather than snorkelling when you send the date. Cave access runs on permits and operator schedules, so it is worth naming before the day is fixed rather than after.

Port Lucaya is where the in-water encounters run from. The dolphin programme starts with a twenty minute boat ride out to a protected lagoon, which is the part that decides the morning: it is a half day rather than an hour. The shark dive is a separate thing and it is for certified divers only.

Both are booked ahead rather than walked into. Both are the reason a party that lands at the wrong end of the island loses the middle of the day to the road. Add water toys if the afternoon is meant to stay on the water, or a dock pickup if a boat is meeting you at the marina.

The south side of the island drops into the Gulf Stream, so the deep water reputation here is older than the resorts. Blue and white marlin, yellowfin and blackfin tuna and sailfish all run through it.

That is a full day on a boat rather than an afternoon, so it sets the return leg rather than fitting around it. A fishing day by seaplane is planned from the set-down point rather than from the terminal. Rods and gear travel within the payload for the aircraft on the day.

The boats leave from the marinas at Lucaya, so a party finishing the day at the western tip or out east has the length of the island to cover twice. That is the single reason to say at the enquiry stage that the day is about deep water: it moves the set-down point rather than the itinerary. It is easier to move before the date is fixed than after.

The north side is the opposite water. Shallow flats run for miles behind the island and they hold bonefish, which is the quiet half of the fishing here and the half that suits a shorter day.

Parties book bonefishing and flats access for exactly that reason: it starts where the water is, not where the runway is. Say how many are fishing when you send the date, because guides and skiffs are counted per head rather than per party.

The flats and the deep water are opposite sides of the same island, so a party that wants both is really asking for two days rather than one long one. Tides decide the flats the way they decide the sandbars, which means the useful hours move through the month and the return leg is planned against them rather than against a clock.

West End is the oldest settlement on Grand Bahama and its westernmost point, about ten miles closer to Florida than Freeport is. Its recorded history runs back to the early 1500s and through a long stretch of smugglers, wreckers and rum runners after that.

Today it is the quiet end: a marina, a resort and very little road noise. For a party arriving by air it is the clearest case for finishing away from the terminal, because the drive out from Freeport is the longest one on the island. That is what a resort transfer by seaplane is for.

It is also the closest Bahamian landfall on this crossing. West End sits about ten miles nearer to Florida than Freeport does, which is worth nothing on a timetable and quite a lot on a day where the light runs out. Parties meeting a boat at the western marinas go straight alongside on a yacht transfer rather than driving out to them.

Gold Rock lies about twenty six miles east of Lucaya inside the national park and it is reached on a ten minute walk through it. At low water the sand runs out flat and shallow for a long way, which is the whole picture people come for. Low water is what decides the hour, not the one you would prefer.

It is also the single part of a Grand Bahama day that is set by the sea rather than by the aircraft. And it is the far end of the island from the airport, so a beach picnic here is an hour of road from a terminal arrival and nothing at all from the water.

Paradise Cove sits west of Freeport and it is the reef you can swim to. Deadman's Reef lies straight off the beach in shallow water, close enough that the snorkellers and the paddlers are looking at the same thing. Peterson Cay is the other one, about a mile offshore on the south side.

It is the smallest national park in the country at an acre and a half, with a quarter mile of protected water around it, reached by boat rather than on foot. Between them they are why the island reads as a snorkelling address as much as a diving one.

Both are shallow enough that a party with children in it is looking at the same reef as the divers, which is the practical difference between this island and a day built around a dive boat. Add water toys if the afternoon stays on the water, or a beach picnic if it comes ashore.

A private seaplane charter Miami to Grand Bahama also works as the first leg rather than the whole day. Grand Bahama is the top of the archipelago and the same aircraft carries on south and east to Bimini, Nassau, Harbour Island, Andros or Staniel Cay and the Exumas.

That is what turns one island into island hopping or a wider Bahamas day. Overnight changes the baggage rather than the route. If a yacht is meeting you, the aircraft can set the party down alongside instead of at a pier. That is a yacht transfer and it is the reason a good number of these flights happen at all.

The full island guide sits on the Grand Bahama destination page and the rest of the chain is on the Bahamas destinations page.