Seaplane from Miami to Treasure Cay

The beach is the reason the name is known. It runs about three miles along the north eastern shore in a long shallow curve. It turns up on best beach lists in the region often enough that people arrive expecting it to be crowded. It is not. The water off it stays ankle deep a long way out, which is what makes it a different proposition from a dive island: a party with children in it is looking at the same water as everybody else. Add water toys if the afternoon stays wet, or a beach picnic if it comes ashore. For an aircraft this is the simplest kind of day to plan, because the thing you came for is at the water rather than inland. Say so when you send the date and the set-down point is chosen for the sand instead of for the terminal.

Green Turtle Cay lies about eight miles up the coast and it cannot be driven to. The ferry goes from a dock beside Treasure Cay Airport, which is the single reason so many itineraries route through here at all. It is the older half of this corner of the Bahamas: a Loyalist settlement from the 1780s, clapboard houses in New Plymouth. The turtles that gave it its name are still in the shallows around it. A day that starts on the beach and ends over there is an ordinary day, not an expedition. An aircraft on floats can also finish there directly, which turns a ferry timetable into a short leg. That is worth saying at the enquiry stage rather than after, because it moves the set-down point rather than the itinerary.

South of here the sheltered water runs down to Elbow Cay and the candy striped lighthouse at Hope Town, which is the most photographed thing in the Abacos and still hand wound with a kerosene burner. It is a different island and a different day, reached by boat from Marsh Harbour or by air. Parties that want both ends of the Sea of Abaco in one visit are really asking for two days. The honest answer to that comes back with the quote rather than after the deposit. Where it does fit into one day is from the air. A scenic flight down the cays covers in twenty minutes what a ferry chain covers in an afternoon.

The championship course here was laid out by Dick Wilson, the architect behind several of the courses in Florida people fly down from. It sits within a few minutes of both the beach and the marina. That proximity is the whole point of it on a short trip. There is no transfer to arrange between the round and the water, which is unusual in the islands and the reason a golf getaway works here as a day rather than a week. Clubs count against the payload like any other gear, so say how many bags are coming when you send the date. The baggage guidance explains why it is a weight rather than a count.

Two more cays sit between here and Hope Town and they pull in opposite directions. Man-O-War Cay is the boatbuilding one, quiet and dry, where the Abaco dinghy was developed and where the sail lofts still work. Great Guana Cay is the opposite: seven miles of ocean beach on the Atlantic side and a beach bar that is the reason a lot of boats cross the Sea of Abaco on a Sunday. Neither has its own page here yet, so both are named rather than linked. Both are short legs from Treasure Cay by water or by air, which is what turns one arrival into island hopping. Overnight changes the baggage rather than the route.

Not everything here is at the shoreline. There is an inland blue hole in the pine forest behind the settlement, a limestone shaft of dark fresh water in the middle of the trees. It is a short drive rather than a boat trip. At the north end of the settlement lie the ruins of the older village, from the Loyalist period that shaped this whole corner of the Bahamas after the American Revolution. Both are the reason a party that has done the beach twice still finds a third day here. Neither needs a boat and both need a car, so they are the part of a Treasure Cay day that ground transport actually changes. On an island where the two airports sit far apart that is worth arranging with the flight rather than on arrival.

The marina behind the beach is a deep water basin with well over a hundred slips, big enough that it is treated as a base for a week on the water rather than a place to tie up for an afternoon. It has held Bahamian blue marlin records. That is a full day on a boat rather than a stop, so it sets the return leg rather than fitting around it. Rods and gear travel within the payload for the aircraft on the day. A fishing day by seaplane is planned from the set-down point rather than from the terminal. North and west of the island the water goes the other way and turns to shallow flats, which is the quiet half of the fishing here and the half that suits a shorter day. Parties book bonefishing and flats access for that reason. If a boat is meeting you, a dock pickup puts the party alongside instead of at a pier.

A private seaplane charter Miami to Treasure Cay also works as the first leg rather than the whole day. Abaco is the northern end of the archipelago and the same aircraft carries on south and east to Harbour Island, Nassau, Andros or Staniel Cay and the Exumas. That is what turns one island into a wider Bahamas day, or into a fly and dine evening somewhere else entirely. Grand Bahama and Bimini lie back towards Florida on the way home. 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 Treasure Cay destination page and the rest of the chain is on the Bahamas destinations page.