The Crossing
Seaplane from Miami to Shroud Cay by Private Charter
Nobody lives on Shroud Cay. It is not one island but a scatter of small cays and islets tied together by mangrove creeks and it is the northern gate of the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park. A seaplane from Miami to Shroud Cay is the one aircraft that finishes on the water beside it rather than an island and a boat ride short.
The cay lies in the northern Exumas, roughly 229 statute miles from downtown Miami and about 199 nautical, almost all of it open water. On floats that is about an hour and a quarter in the air. The border adds a stop on the way in, so the morning is longer than the flight.
What sits between those two numbers is ours: the departure point in Miami, the aircraft and the crew, the clearance the chain forces on you, both government filings and the travel documents the Bahamas wants before anybody leaves Florida. Your party brings passports and a bag.
This is one of the longer crossings we fly from a seaplane base in Miami and one of several seaplane routes out of the city. The aircraft is a small plane on floats, eight seats and nine in some configurations.
It is the same airframe whether the day finishes off the creek mouth, alongside a boat or further down the chain and which of the three it is gets decided with you rather than for you.
Plan Your Shroud Cay Charter
How It Works
How a Seaplane Miami to Shroud Cay Actually Works
A seaplane Miami to Shroud Cay flight is two problems, not one. The first is distance and it is the easy half. The second is that the cay you are aiming at sits inside a national park with nobody on it and no customs desk within fifty miles.
Nobody clears a border on an uninhabited cay, so the aircraft meets the officers somewhere else first and flies the last stretch afterwards. What follows is the whole sequence in order, from the water at the Miami end to the ramp where the day finishes on the way home.
Plan Your Shroud Cay CharterDistance and Time to Shroud Cay
Just under two hundred nautical miles of open water and about an hour and a quarter of it in the air
Downtown Miami to Shroud Cay is roughly 229 statute miles, about 199 nautical and almost none of that is over land. On floats it works out at roughly an hour and a quarter airborne. The clearance stop and the taxi at both ends are what turn that into the length of the morning.
The Whole Aircraft to Shroud Cay
The aircraft is chartered whole, so your party flies to Shroud Cay together and comes home together
The aircraft stays with you rather than turning around, so five hours in the park means five hours.
The Water Landing at Shroud Cay
The floats put you down on the water beside the cay, where there is no runway and no pier to tie to
Shroud Cay carries no airstrip, no settlement and no dock. A wheeled aircraft therefore lands well to the south and the day continues by boat for an hour or more. A seaplane skips that leg.
Water landing sites in the Bahamas are approved individually by the civil aviation authority rather than assumed, which is one of the things arranged before your date. The mechanics sit in the water landing guide.
Leaving Miami for Shroud Cay
Leaving Miami for Shroud Cay means the manifest is filed long before you reach the dock
Every passenger needs a valid passport, children included and a driving licence will not do. What counts as valid is in the travel documents guidance. Names and numbers go in from our side, in advance.
Clearing Into the Bahamas on the Way to Shroud Cay
The Bahamas wants your first landing at a port of entry and a cay inside a national park is not one
An aircraft may enter the country only at a designated port of entry. The Bahamian customs list carries exactly one staffed port in the whole Exumas district, George Town and that is about 95 miles south of Shroud Cay at the far end of the chain. Staniel Cay appears on the same list with a note beside it: no officers stationed.
So the clearance happens at Nassau instead, about 51 miles northwest and the nearest staffed desk to the cay, or at Andros, which carries three ports of entry with a strip and a dock apiece. You land, the officers see the passports, the forms were filed from Florida and it is quick. Then the aircraft flies the last leg and the floats go down beside the mangroves.
The Way Back From Shroud Cay
The way back carries its own clock and it usually ends at US customs in Opa-locka
Water landings run only from 30 minutes after sunrise to 30 minutes before sunset, so nothing on floats arrives in the dark and the return leg has a deadline from the moment the date is set.
Bahamian customs desks keep daytime hours that close before the sun does and out here the clearance is a separate stop rather than a walk across the ramp, so it is the desk and not the daylight that fixes your departure. Both clocks move through the year, so the latest useful departure comes with the quote.
The return is filed with US Customs before you leave and that filing decides where the aircraft may put down in South Florida. Opa-locka Executive is where a return from the islands clears, so a day that began on the water finishes on a ramp. We take care of both ends of any chartered flight from Miami to the Bahamas.
Departure Points
Departure Points for a Seaplane Miami to Shroud Cay
A seaplane needs no airport at the Miami end, so the departure point follows your morning rather than the aircraft. Two of these four put you on the water, two on a ramp.
Miami Seaplane Base
555 NE 15th St, Miami
The water departure, on Biscayne Bay just north of downtown. Boarding is from the dock, so nothing between the car and the aircraft looks like an airport. The shortest ground leg for Brickell, downtown and the beach and the usual choice when a yacht is the other half of the day.
Opa-locka Executive
Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport, OPF
The executive airport north west of the city, with private terminal handling at both ends of the day. It is also where a return from the islands clears US customs, which is why an international day that leaves from the water often comes back here rather than to the dock it started from.
Miami Executive
Miami Executive Airport, TMB, Kendall
Kendall-Tamiami, in the south west of the county. When the aircraft for your date is already based at this field, the charter starts without a positioning leg. That matters most on a same day return, where an hour lost in Florida is an hour lost at the far end.
Miami International
Miami International Airport, MIA
A pickup rather than a base and the right one when the party is already landing at MIA and the onward leg should leave from the same airport. No aircraft is stationed here, so it is arranged per flight and confirmed with the operator before it is quoted.
How to Charter
How to Charter a Seaplane to Shroud Cay from Miami
Chartering a seaplane is not booking a seat. There are four steps, and only the first one is yours.
Plan Your Shroud Cay Charter- 01
Contact Us
Write to us on WhatsApp or by email. Send your dates, how many guests, where you are coming from and where you want to travel. Tell us the hour you would like to leave. A seaplane lands on water and on runways. Your pickup can be a marina, a hotel dock or a beach, and an airport works just as well.
- 02
Get Aircraft and Prices Back
We check what is free on your date and send the seaplanes that fit. Seats, baggage and flight time for each one. Every aircraft costs a little differently, so we can find the best fit for you.
- 03
Confirm and Pay
You pick the aircraft, and we set the pickup point and the landing site. Then everything around the flight. Catering on board, a car or a golf cart waiting when you land, ground transport to your hotel or back to the airport. Flowers if the day is a special one. You approve it, you pay, and your boarding time, departure point and everything included come back to you.
- 04
Just Arrive 30 Minutes Early
You will have no terminal and no queue. Just make sure you are there 30 minutes before. Then you take off, land right at your destination, and enjoy the day.
On the Water
Where a Miami to Shroud Cay Seaplane Puts You Down
Shroud Cay is not one island. It is a scatter of small cays and islets held together by tidal creeks, with nobody on any of them and no building of any kind and the water landing puts you at the northern end of it.
What follows is what parties actually do with the hours in between, in the order they ask for it.
Plan Your Shroud Cay CharterThe Creeks Through Shroud Cay
Most Asked For
This is what everyone comes for. Tidal creeks cut clean through the cay from the bank on the west side to the ocean on the east, so you go in at one shore and come out at the other, through mangrove that closes over the water in places.
The longest of them is called Sanctuary Creek and it is shallow, clear and full of young fish and turtles that have never been fished for.
The park writes the rules here rather than the boat operators and they are stricter than anywhere else on the route. The north creek is a strict idle speed and no wake zone.
Motorised boats are not allowed into any of the other creeks at all, so those are done by paddleboard, kayak or on foot at the right state of tide. Say whether the party wants to paddle when you send the date, because boards and kayaks are payload on a float aircraft and go into the same weight calculation as the bags.
Where the Creek Meets the Sound
The Tide Decides
At the eastern end the creek opens onto the ocean over a bar of sand. On a falling tide the water leaving the bank funnels through that gap and runs fast enough to carry a swimmer along it, so it has ended up with a nickname that sounds like a fairground ride rather than a national park.
It is the one part of a day here that the sea sets rather than the aircraft. The current only runs on the tide, so the hour it works is the hour it works. Tell us if it is the reason you are coming, because the tide table for your date is one of the things we plan the departure around.
Camp Driftwood and the Lookout
A Short Climb
On the high ground at the eastern end there is a lookout built in the 1960s and known ever since as Camp Driftwood. The name suggests a campsite and it is nothing of the kind: it is a short scramble up to a point where you can see the creeks behind you, the sand bar below and the ocean going dark blue in front.
It is the photograph people come back with. The climb is minutes rather than an expedition, but it is rock and scrub with no handrail, so it is worth mentioning who is walking when you send the date: we pass it to the operator so the tender goes to the right beach for your party.
The Ocean Side Beaches
Nobody On Them
The beaches on the ocean side of the cay are the reason the creek is worth the crossing rather than just the paddle. They face the open Exuma Sound, they are long and pale and there is no road, no bar and nothing built behind them.
That also means no shade, no water and nothing to buy. The park keeps no bins on the cays and asks that everything brought in leaves again, so lunch, drinks and shade all fly out with you. This is where a beach picnic goes and catering is loaded in Miami rather than found on the island.
Turtles, Rays and the Ospreys
What Lives Here
The creeks work as a nursery. Green turtles feed in them, young fish and shellfish grow up in them before they ever reach the reef and rays cross the shallow sand in water you could stand up in. Because nothing has been taken out of this water for decades, the animals do not clear off when a tender comes round the bend.
Ospreys nest in the mangrove and hunt the same creeks and under the park rules they are the only ones allowed to fish in them. Nothing here is a show put on for visitors, so what you see depends on the hour and the tide rather than on a schedule.
The Park You Land In
No Take Zone
Shroud Cay is the northern boundary of the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park, which runs south from here to Bell Cay. It was created in 1958, it was the first land and sea park anywhere in the world and it covers about 176 square miles of cays and water. One rule explains everything else about the place: nothing living or dead comes out of it.
No fishing, no shelling, no conching, no lobster and no coral, on the land or in the water. That has been enforced long enough that the water inside the boundary looks measurably different from the water outside it and it is the reason a snorkel here is worth more than a snorkel an hour further south.
Warderick Wells and the Cays Either Side
Minutes Away
The park headquarters sits at Warderick Wells, about fourteen miles down the chain and that is where the daily park fee is paid and where the wardens work from. North of Shroud Cay the park stops: Norman's Cay is a few miles up, Highbourne Cay about twelve and both sit outside the boundary with different rules.
The point of that geography is what it does to a day. Everything within half an hour of the anchorage is either protected water or a cay with a marina, so an afternoon can be built either way. Which one it is gets settled with the date, because the tender and the timings follow from it.
Onward Down the Chain
Same Aircraft
A private seaplane charter Miami to Shroud Cay also works as the first leg rather than the whole day. The same aircraft carries on south to Staniel Cay and the rest of the Exumas, or back north to Nassau. That is what turns one cay 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 beach. 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 Shroud Cay destination page, the packaged version is the Shroud Cay getaway day trip and the rest of the chain is on the Bahamas destinations page.
Ready When You Are
Ready to Book Seaplane Flights from Miami to Shroud Cay?
Send the departure point, the number of guests and from when to when. You get back what is free on your dates, the boarding time and what the day costs, before anything is booked.
Add-Ons
Seaplane to Shroud Cay Add-Ons
Anything else you have in mind is arranged with the flight.
In Detail
Seaplane from Miami to Shroud Cay: The Crossing, the Border and a Cay With No Pier
Everything above is the day. What follows is the detail behind it: the crossing, the clearance stop, the arrival beside the creeks and what charter and private actually change about a flight to the Bahamas.
Seaplane Miami to Shroud Cay: Flying Low Over the Reef and the Flats
Room enough and a window each on a Shroud Cay seaplane
The crossing is not dead time between two airports. A seaplane runs low and slow, so the water under the wing is the first thing the day gives you. The cay lies in the northern Exumas, roughly 229 statute miles from downtown Miami and about 199 nautical, almost all of it open water. What sits between those two numbers is ours: the departure point in Miami, the aircraft and the crew, the clearance the chain forces on you, both government filings and the travel documents the Bahamas wants before anybody leaves Florida. A chartered aircraft sits at the anchorage until your party is finished, so five hours in the park is five hours and not whatever is left after a group of strangers has had its turn in the creek. Every seat is a window seat on seaplanes in the fleet of this size, so nobody watches the crossing over someone's shoulder. Other seaplane routes from Miami fly the same way.
Seaplane to Shroud Cay from Miami: You Decide the Departure Time
Your hour, your names and a seaplane to Shroud Cay
Nobody hands you a timetable on a charter. The day is built around the hour you name. You name the hour you want to lift off, the hour you want to be standing on Shroud Cay and which water in the city suits your morning. The aircraft belongs to your party for the day, so all three are your decision rather than a departure somebody else set, and a change the week before is a message to us. If the drive is shorter the other way, the same day runs out of Fort Lauderdale. Half an hour before the lift-off is the whole of the check-in. Your party walks from the car to the aircraft, the bags go on in front of you, and the list for that flight carries your names and nobody else's. Nothing about the morning waits on a stranger. The border adds a stop on the way in, so the morning is longer than the flight. And the crossing is a reason in itself. The windows are deep and the aircraft crosses low, so there is room for everybody to sit and watch the water change instead of taking turns at one of them.
Miami to Shroud Cay Seaplane: The Crew Files Both Borders, You Carry a Passport
Passports are all your party carries on a Shroud Cay crossing
A seaplane from Miami to Shroud Cay crosses an international border twice in a day. It is the part that goes wrong when nobody files it in advance. Entry into the Bahamas asks for a declaration filed from Florida, clearance at a port of entry on arrival and a US return filed before you leave, which is what sets where you may land coming home. On a Crown Air charter the crew files all three. Your party carries a valid passport and nothing else. Passports for everyone, children included, per the travel documents guidance. What may travel sits in the baggage guidance. That same filing sets where you land coming home: a return from the islands clears at Opa-locka Executive, so a day that began on the water finishes on a ramp and a departure moved by weather runs under the weather and delays policy. If the party changes before the flight, the crew refiles. A name added, a name dropped: that is a message to us rather than a problem for you.
Seaplane Miami Shroud Cay: Milestone Days and Bahamas Weekends
A day trip, a weekend or something to celebrate on Shroud Cay
A private seaplane from Miami to Shroud Cay is booked when the day is worth marking: a birthday, a proposal, a graduation, a weekend away with the people who matter. The flight is short enough that the occasion, not the travelling, is what the day is about. That is what a seaplane Miami Shroud Cay charter is for. The date comes first and the aircraft is planned around it, so a lunch that cannot move or a boat that leaves at a set hour sets the hour of the flight rather than the other way round. Some parties fly over for the day and are home the same evening. Others stay on and book the return for the day they want. Both are the same charter, and the whole group travels together on one booking. If there is something to celebrate, say so when you book: catering, a private chef, premium beverages and flowers travel with you. Everything is in place before you board in Miami.
Questions
Seaplane from Miami to Shroud Cay: Questions Answered
How long is the seaplane flight from Miami to Shroud Cay?
About an hour and a quarter in the air. Shroud Cay lies roughly 229 statute miles from downtown Miami, about 199 nautical and almost all of that is open water.
The day is longer than the flight, because the Bahamas requires a stop at a port of entry on the way in and there is no customs desk anywhere in the northern Exumas. The exact block time depends on the aircraft and the departure point and it is confirmed with the boarding time before you book.
Where is Shroud Cay?
In the northern Exuma Cays, in the central Bahamas, about 51 miles southeast of Nassau and roughly 33 miles north of Staniel Cay. It is the northernmost cay of the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park, which runs south from here to Bell Cay. From Miami it is about 229 statute miles across open water, which is why almost everyone arrives by air rather than by boat.
What is on Shroud Cay?
Mangroves, sand and water. Shroud Cay is not a single island but a group of small cays and islets stitched together by tidal creeks and there is no settlement, no hotel, no shop and no airstrip on any of them.
The park does not even carry a rubbish bin: everything brought in is carried back out again. That emptiness is the character of the place and it is also why the arrangements matter more than they would somewhere with a marina, because whatever the day needs travels with you on the aircraft.
What is the Exuma Cays Land and Sea Park?
A national park run by the Bahamas National Trust, created in 1958 and the first land and sea park anywhere in the world. It covers about 176 square miles of cays and water and runs from Shroud Cay in the north to Bell Cay in the south, with its headquarters and its daily user fee at Warderick Wells in the middle.
The whole park is a no-take zone: no fishing, no shelling, no conching and nothing living or dead removed from inside its boundaries. That single rule is the reason the water here is worth the crossing.
Do I need a passport to fly to Shroud Cay?
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.
How does customs work on a seaplane flight to Shroud Cay?
An aircraft may enter the Bahamas only at a designated port of entry and there is no officer anywhere in the northern Exumas. The Bahamian customs list carries one staffed port for the whole district, George Town, about 95 miles south at the far end of the chain and it notes that Staniel Cay has nobody stationed on it.
So the aircraft clears at Nassau, about 51 miles northwest and the nearest staffed desk, or at Andros, which carries three ports of entry with a strip and a dock apiece. That stop is planned into the route rather than added on the day. None of the paperwork is yours: we make both filings and arrange the clearance, so your part is the enquiry.
Can a seaplane really land at Shroud Cay?
That is the point of the aircraft. There is no runway on the cay and no pier to tie to, so floats put the party down on the water and a tender takes it from there.
Water landing sites in the Bahamas are approved individually by the civil aviation authority rather than assumed, so the site for your date is arranged in advance along with the clearance. If the water is wrong on the morning, the honest alternative is a strip further south and a boat and we say so rather than fly you out to find out.
Can you go up the mangrove creeks at Shroud Cay?
Yes and this is the thing almost everyone comes for. The creeks cut right through the cay from the bank side to the ocean side and open onto a beach at the far end.
The park sets the rules rather than the operators: the north creek is a strict idle speed and no wake zone and motorised boats are not allowed into any of the other creeks at all, so those are done by paddleboard or kayak.
Say whether the party wants to paddle when you send the date, because boards and kayaks are payload on a float aircraft and are counted with the bags.
Can you do Shroud Cay as a day trip from Miami?
Yes and it is the most common way parties do it. Out early, back before dark, with the aircraft waiting at the anchorage rather than turning around, so the hours you booked in the park are the hours you get.
The clearance stop is planned into the morning and both borders are filed in advance from our side. It makes for a long day rather than a short one, which is worth knowing when there are small children in the party.
How late can we fly back from Shroud Cay on the same day?
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.
Bahamian customs desks close earlier than the sun does and out here the clearance is a separate stop rather than a walk across the ramp, so in practice it is the desk that sets the return. Both clocks move through the year, which is why the latest departure for your date comes with the quote.
How many people can fly to Shroud Cay on one charter?
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, because they count as passengers on an international manifest and go into the filing by name.
What happens if the weather stops the Shroud Cay flight?
Water operations depend on wind and sea state as well as visibility, so a departure can move on a day that looks clear from the beach and summer afternoons move return legs more often than mornings do.
The call belongs to the operator rather than the guest and you are told before you book how a moved departure is handled. Because the aircraft carries only your party, a new slot is agreed with you rather than assigned to you.
Can the seaplane take us on from Shroud Cay to another island the same day?
Yes. Shroud Cay is the top of the park rather than the end of the chain and the same aircraft carries on to Warderick Wells, Staniel Cay, the southern Exumas or back up to Nassau.
Say so when you send the date, because a second leg changes the timing and the fuel and the clearance is planned around the port of entry rather than around the stop you want. For a yacht or another 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.
Can I bring a pet on a seaplane charter?
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.
Next Step
Ready to Book a Seaplane Charter Miami to Shroud Cay?
Send the departure point, the party size and from when to when. Nothing else needs planning: you get back what is free on your dates, the boarding time and what the Shroud Cay day costs.
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