Seaplane from Miami to Sandy Cay

Sandy Cay, also called White Cay, is a small uninhabited cay at the southern end of the Exuma chain, about 24 miles southeast of George Town on Great Exuma and roughly 11 miles from Tropic of Cancer Beach on Little Exuma. It sits off Hog Cay, past Williams Town at the far end of the island.

There is no settlement, no dock and no airstrip on it, which is why it is normally reached only by boat. Note that several cays in the Bahamas carry the name Sandy Cay, so it is worth naming the Exumas when you send the date.

Roughly 341 statute miles, about 296 nautical, measured from downtown Miami and almost all of it open water. That puts it past Great Exuma at the bottom end of the chain.

On a leg that long the aircraft is decided to the route rather than assumed, so the block time for your date comes back with the quote instead of being promised in advance. What sets the length of the day is not the flying. It is the clearance stop and the daylight the return leg needs.

Yes. The Exumas are in the Bahamas, so this is an international flight and every passenger needs a valid passport, children and infants included. Full names and passport numbers go in when you book rather than at the dock, because both border filings are made in advance from our side. There is no check-in desk on this route and nothing to hand over at the slip.

The Bahamas lets an aircraft arrive only at a designated port of entry and an uninhabited cay is never one. So the aircraft stops at a port on the way in, everyone clears with their passports and it flies the last leg afterwards. Which port that is depends on the aircraft, the routing and the date: Bimini, Nassau and Exuma International at George Town all sit on this line.

The one your flight uses comes back with the quote. Customs hours run 09:00 to 17:30, so the stop is planned into the hours the officers keep. None of the paperwork is yours: we make both filings, we arrange the clearance and it is quick.

It lands on the water off it rather than on the cay. Bahamian water landing sites are approved individually by the civil aviation authority rather than assumed, so the set-down point is agreed before your date rather than picked on the morning.

Sea state matters more at an open cay than in a harbour, which is why the operator makes that call and why a second plan is part of the itinerary rather than a surprise on the day.

Yes. With the aircraft waiting rather than turning around it is the only sensible way to do it in a day. Out in the morning, the customs stop on the way in, then the cay, then home before dark.

Both borders are filed in advance from our side. Because the cay has nothing on it, the hours you spend there are the hours you asked for and nothing about the day is shared with anybody else.

A seaplane needs daylight on the water. Landings run from 30 minutes after sunrise to 30 minutes before sunset, so the day has a hard end rather than an open one. On this route the customs desk closes earlier than the sun, which in practice fixes the return.

Both clocks move through the year, which is why the latest departure for your date comes with the quote. A return arriving after dark lands on a lit runway instead of on water.

The aircraft is chartered whole rather than sold by the seat, so your party travels together on one booking and comes home on the same aircraft.

How many seats that is depends on which aircraft flies your date and on the payload once baggage is aboard, so it is confirmed with the quote rather than promised in advance. Send the headcount and say whether children are travelling: they count as passengers on an international manifest.

No. There is no bar, no shade built for guests, no water and nowhere to buy anything. That is the reason people go. Everything the afternoon needs travels in with you, which is why catering, water toys and a picnic are arranged with the flight rather than found on arrival. The cay is also protected ground for a rock iguana that lives nowhere else, so nothing is left behind on the sand.

At low water the bank dries out from the cay into open sand running roughly a mile, with nothing on it and nothing around it. At high water most of that is gone, so the tide decides the hour rather than the diary.

Say when you send the date that the bar is what you are coming for and the departure is planned to low water, which is the one part of the day the aircraft cannot move.

It is one of them. Beach scenes were shot at the cay and on a sandbar a couple of miles south of it, which is why it turns up in every list of film locations in the Bahamas.

The reason to fly there is the same either way: it is empty, the water is shallow and pale for a long way out and there is no road, no ferry and nobody selling anything on the sand.

The Sandy Cay rock iguana, also called the White Cay iguana, lives on this one cay and nowhere else in the world.

A feral raccoon and a rat population very nearly finished it in the 1990s: after both were removed, surveys counted between 112 and 168 animals and by 2008 the population had come back past two thousand. That history is why the cay is treated as protected ground and why guests walk it carefully and take everything away again.

Yes. Sandy Cay sits at the bottom of the chain and the same aircraft works north up the Exumas to Staniel Cay, Big Major Cay, Compass Cay and Black Point, or across to Long Island.

Say so when you send the date, because a second leg changes the timing and the clearance is planned around the port of entry rather than around the stop you want. For a yacht or a private cay we pass the coordinates, the pilots decide whether they can put down there and a tender has to be in the water to collect you.

A charter is priced as a whole aircraft, not per seat, so the number moves with three things: which aircraft flies your date, how many of you there are once bags are aboard and how long the aircraft waits at the cay.

Tell us those and you get one all-in number, with the departure point, the boarding time and the hours at the cay it is based on, before anything is due. Bahamian and US entry fees are inside that number rather than added at the end.

Yes, pets travel in the cabin with you. The one thing we ask is that you tell us at the enquiry, with the type of animal and its weight, so the seating and the load plan are right from the start.