Small Plane from Miami to Harbour Island

Runway 07/25 runs east to west across the top of the island, 6,020 feet of asphalt with water at both ends. It is the field that serves Harbour Island and Spanish Wells and the northern third of Eleuthera, so for an island with no strip of its own this is the strip. The terminal is a small building and customs and immigration are inside it. That is the fact this whole route hangs on: a private arrival has to enter the country at an airport of entry, and this is the one that belongs to Harbour Island. Expect the formalities to take minutes rather than an hour. The crew has filed everything before departure and the desk keeps daytime hours, which is the one reason a morning slot is worth more than a late afternoon one. Flag any passport that is not United States at the enquiry rather than at the counter.

The dock is a few minutes from the apron by road and the water taxi crosses to Government Dock, which sits in the middle of Dunmore Town rather than at the edge of it. The whole crossing is three and a half miles door to door. Boats run through the day and the crossing is short enough that nobody plans a day around it. It is still a genuine extra step compared with being put down on the water, and it is the step that buys you a paved runway, which is the better trade on a winter morning or with a load on board. Parties who would rather not do it at all fly the same route by seaplane instead. We quote both against each other rather than selling one, because which is right depends on the date, the water and what the party is carrying. A cart or a car on either side is arranged through ground transport.

The ocean side of Harbour Island is the pink sand the place is known for. The colour is broken shell worked through the sand and it reads strongest in flat morning light, which is a real argument for an early boarding time rather than a lunchtime one. It is a beach, not an attraction: no gate, nothing to book, and it runs long enough that a busy day still leaves stretches of it empty. Walking is the usual way from town and the island page covers what else is on it properly.

Harbour Island is small and the town is the whole of it: clapboard houses, narrow lanes, the harbour on one side and the beach over the hill on the other. Government Dock lands you in the middle, and most of what a visitor wants is a walk from there. St John's Anglican Church on Dunmore Street, a pink and white building from 1768, is the oldest religious foundation in the Bahamas, and Wesley Methodist is a short walk from it. The transport is a golf cart. That is not a novelty, it is what everybody uses, and one can be waiting at the dock when the boat comes in. Anything you want set up before you land goes on the same plan as the flight through custom requests, and a table booked in advance is a fly and dine day.

Behind the waterfront Dunmore Town is a grid of clapboard houses laid out by loyalist settlers in the eighteenth century, and it has kept the shape: narrow lanes running back from the water, picket fences, bougainvillea over the walls and a colour on every door. It is about a mile end to end, so the whole of it is walkable in an afternoon between the boat in and the boat out. Colebrook Street runs east towards Sunset Dock and the Wall of License Plates, the old Loyalist Cottage sits above the harbour looking across at the mainland you flew over, and the fish fry along the bay side is where the town eats in the evening.

North Eleuthera serves two islands, not one. Spanish Wells sits off the opposite corner and has its own dock and its own short crossing, so a party can see both from a single arrival without a second flight. It is a working fishing island rather than a resort one, which is exactly why some guests prefer it. Which dock the transfer uses is a ground question rather than a flying one and it is settled with the quote.

This is the part of the day a runway changes most. Load on a small aircraft is a weight question rather than a bag count, and a wheeled airframe has more of it to give than floats do. Golf clubs, dive tanks, rods, a cooler for the boat, a case of something for the house: all of it travels, within the payload for the aircraft on the day. Say what is coming at the enquiry rather than at the ramp and see the baggage guidance for how the trade between passengers and weight actually works. Anything larger than luggage is a different service on the same runway and that is island logistics rather than a charter with extra bags.

The island the runway sits on runs a hundred miles south from there and is a mile wide for most of it. Guests who land here for Harbour Island sometimes take a car down it instead, and that is a different day with its own page. The Eleuthera destination page covers the length of it, and the crossing itself has its own route as Miami to Eleuthera by small plane. Both are flown by the same aircraft off the same asphalt.

Harbour Island works as one leg of a longer trip rather than only as a destination, and clearing in here is what makes that easy: once you are through the desk at North Eleuthera, every leg after it is domestic. The same airframe carries on to Nassau, Staniel Cay and the Exumas, Andros or back north to Grand Bahama. That is what turns one island into island hopping or a wider Bahamas day. Where the next island has no strip of its own, that leg switches aircraft rather than cancelling the plan. The packaged version of a single day is the Harbour Island getaway day trip and the rest of the chain is on the Bahamas destinations page.