Seaplane from Miami to Royal Island

The harbour is the reason the island works without a runway. 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 there through a blow that would move them anywhere else. For an aircraft on floats the same shelter means a landing that is not at the mercy of the open sound outside.

If a boat is meeting you, the aircraft can set the party down alongside rather than at a pier. That is a yacht transfer and in this harbour it is the most natural arrival there is. Add a dock pickup if a tender is coming for you instead.

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 water toys turn the afternoon into the point of the day rather than the gap in it.

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.

It is a short hop by air and a longer, more careful trip by water, which is covered in its own tab below. Parties who want the beach as the centre of the day are usually better served by the Miami to Harbour Island crossing and a stop at Royal Island on the way, .

Say which of the two is the point when you send the date. It changes the routing rather than the price of the day and it is easier to fix before the itinerary is written than after.

A party that wants both usually takes the harbour first and the beach in the afternoon, because the light on the pink sand is worth more late than early and the return leg is planned against the customs desk rather than against the sunset.

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. 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. Its own crossing from Florida is the Miami to Spanish Wells seaplane page.

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 the air it is the best looking part of the arrival: pale sand, dark coral heads and the wrecks that did not make it, all of it visible from a float aircraft at low level.

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

South west 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.

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. Eagle rays, reef sharks and big schools of jacks hold in the flow.

Nine nautical miles from the harbour is the airport at 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 here 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 harbour ends up spending half the day on Eleuthera.

The airport itself is one of the ports of entry that serve this corner, so a runway arrival and a boat across is a real alternative to the harbour landing rather than a fallback. Which of the two your day uses is decided with the quote.

A private seaplane charter Miami to Royal Island also works as the first leg rather than the whole day. The same aircraft carries on to Nassau about forty miles south west, Grand Bahama, 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.

Guests who want a table rather than a boat book a fly and dine day. Anything outside the usual list goes to custom requests. The full island guide sits on the Royal Island destination page, the packaged version is the Royal Island getaway day trip and the rest of the chain is on the Bahamas destinations page.