Flying in the Bahamas 2024
Some practical tips for a vfr pilot navigating airspace and airports in the Bahamas
I’ve always imagined a Bahamas adventure. The idea of flying from island to island peering down at nature’s abstract azure paintings. We finally turned the dream into reality this summer. My goal was to time the trip so the peak season was ending while still minimizing the potential weather from hurricane season. The final dates ended up being June 15 - 24, 2024.
My wife and I live in the Nashville area and our son is entering his final year of college in St Pete, FL, so we flew down of Friday evening and slept at his place, ready for a Saturday morning departure.
I use Foreflight for route planning and we decided that our first stop was going to be Great Harbor in the Berry Islands, MYBG. I’m a VFR pilot. If you fly IFR, much of this will not be applicable to you.
I filed a DVFR flight plan KSPG - KPBI (Palm Beach) - MYBG (Great Harbor) using Foreflight. Only use DVFR when exiting the US and again when entering the US. Otherwise, you do not need DVFR.
You must also file EAPIS and have a sticker renewed annually in order to transit the border. The sticker is $25 and it is affixed to the plane. I use an App called Flashpass to file EAPIS. Works perfectly every time. Flashpass sees that KSPG is not a valid border airport, so I filed EAPIS as KPBI - MYBG and set the departure time to coincide with my predicted overfly of KPBI.
Since I was actually departing KSPG (Albert Whitted in St. Pete), I opened a VFR Flight following with Tampa Departure as KSPG - KPBI - MYBG as I climbed out of KSPG over the radio.
I like VFR flight following when passing though busy areas or during international travel. Handoffs generally go as expected and if you choose altitudes above 5,000 ft, in many cases, you can keep direct routing even over the tops of very busy airports.
We did have some weather along the way, but it was light showers and we were able to use the XM weather onboard to find a pretty nice wedge. I’m alway so impressed with the accuracy of the satellite weather.
I planned for no fuel refill at MYBG. We had 20 gallons left when we landed representing 2.5 hours of flight time.
It’s important for you to be aware of your fuel options. A majority of the airports do not have fuel options (even if they seem to have FBO options). If I required fuel, I promised myself that I must talk to someone at the FBO to confirm it was available before landing.
We stayed at a very convenient condo right on the beach. We rented a cart from Cleveland, 242-464-4012, and spend the next day getting to know the island. Cleveland used to be the principle at the school so everyone knows him. They call him Chief. The beach is stunning. We also enjoyed the food at every place we ate. The liquor store was a strange experience, but sometimes that’s what the island gives you.
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The drive south to Shark Creek Beach is brief and ends in Casuarina trees whose soft needles carpet the beach while the trees provide shade, emitting a soothing whistle as the breeze passes through. We found a conch large enough to eat (look for the flair) and waded out several hundred yards in knee-deep water.
We decided to move to a new island every other day, weather depending. My logic was that I’d have one full day every other day where I could cut loose and not think about flying at all. As fun as it is to have no schedule, I couldn’t help but think ahead to what the most logical next island would be. Between fuel, transportation and accommodation, there’s always a little low grade concern for the next move. Plan too far in advance and weather could cause us to lose our room. Plan to short term and we may not be able to secure a room at all.
I initially didn’t realize that Foreflight’s VFR flight filing system worked in the Bahamas, so I called Nassau Flight Service (Radio) at 1-242-377-2006 and filed it. Once in the air, I would try to activate it at 128.0. This was hit or miss, but once activated, it showed up for Nassau Approach and I could get a squawk code. I did find that if I couldn’t reach Nassau Radio, I could usually get Nassau Approach who were helpful as a bridge to Nassau radio.
As in the States, remember to close your flight plan after landing. It’s not good form for search and rescue to be calling around making sure if you landed safely.
After a nice explore we had a solid night rest and flew from Great Harbor to Big Whale Cay. Big Whale has maybe 5 houses on it with a 3,000 foot runway. We had some pretty strong winds at 24 kts but they were right down the centerline. While on left base, I thought we were going to have a nasty crosswind and almost aborted the landing, but it cut to 6kts cross and we dropped it in. We parked the plane in packed sand just off the end of the runway, put on our bug spray and explored the southern end.
I filed all legs of this trip, because I had no idea what our service would look like on Big Whale. Depart MYBG (9:30 am) - MYBW (Big Whale 10-12:30) - MYEH (Land 1:30). The MYEH stop in North Eleuthera was for fuel only. We originally wanted to refuel at MYAN, but they do not stock fuel.
We made a quick turn for fuel at North Eleuthera and filed VFR from MYEH - MYAB (Clarence A. Bain, but everyone calls it Mangrove Cay). We planned to stay at a nice resort called Tiamo on Andros. Tiamo is actually on the same chunk of land as MYAK shown below, but the winds were still cranking out of the East-Northeast and Tiamo was able to give us the option to fly into the airport that had a better runway heading. Every degree matters when the winds are at 24 kts in a small plane. Again, I called to file the flight plan, activated in air, checked in with Nassau Approach. This time I canceled my flight plan and Nassau approach independently as I made my descent into MYAB.
A taxi arranged by Tiamo delivered us from from MYAB to the northwest shore of the inland river and the resort ferried us across the river. Scored a “free” boat ride! Again, no fuel at MYAB but we had over 3.5 hour of fuel on board since we topped up at North Eleuthera.
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Tiamo, was quite luxurious. We had our own villa with a private pool. I do like this type of place, but only for a limited time. The routine of waking, swimming, eating, sailing, eating, sleeping gets to be enough after a day or two. Probably the only negative to Tiamo was the food prices, but everything was delicious and the service was excellent.
Two days later I filed MYAB - MYLS for Stella Maris on Long Island. The winds eased up and we had a beautiful flight as we floated over the Exumas. We’ve spent time there so I decided to skip it for this trip. I confirmed fuel availability at Stella Maris. Great airport. Donald runs the place well. He met us at the tie down, helped us with our bags and in general made us feel welcome.
Stella Maris resort scheduled a taxi to their hotel. It was HOT on Long Island and the mosquitoes were epic. Not as bad as Culebra, but not far off.
The resort had an amazing pool carved out of the ocean. The following day, we rented a car for $85 and drove from the northern tip Columbus memorial to Deans blue hole (not all the way to the southern end). Dean’s blue hole is a natural 200+ meter wonder, and is also a world class free diving location. We spoke to some athletes who had descended to 85 meters. It’s pretty crazy to swim over the steep sandy slope and watch the floor fall into the abyss.
The following day, I filed VFR MYLS - MTAM (Marsh Harbour). We love the Abacos and have friends in Elbow Cay. We had to try a few Nassau Radio frequencies to activate the flight plan. We couldn’t reach anyone until we were north of Cat Island (right where you can see the squared off airspace). Once activated, we contacted Nassau approach and received a squawk code which we kept until we exited their airspace at around North Eleuthera. We descended to 700 AGL by Cherokee (Pete’s Pub for those in the know) and flew the entire Abaco out-island chain up to Munjack Cay. It was amazing. It’s probably my favorite thing to do when in the Bahamas.
Returning from Munjack to MYAM at 1000 AGL, we negotiated our entry among 5 other high speed turbines and jets, made a phone call to cancel my flight plan and caught a taxi to the ferry dock. Thirty minutes later we were in Hopetown on Elbow Cay visiting out friends Rachael and Neil.
Let’s take a detour to understand the paperwork required during this process. I welcome comments because my understanding is only as good as my most recent experience and the mistakes I made. There are 3 main classes of forms (none of which you need to bring). They have them at each customs location.
C7A - Inbound
Cruising Permit - While in country
C7B - Outbound
The inbound is pretty easy. It just identifies how you first landed in the Bahamas and requires a $50 fee for the pilot.
The cruising permit gets sticky if you are bouncing from island to island. At every place I stopped, they assumed I was planning to return to the states for my next leg. When they make this assumption, they make you fill out a cruising permit, then they keep the cruising permit then they give you a C7B outbound. This is a problem, because if you plan to bounce around like I did, you need to keep the cruising permit. It serves as a stamped paper trail for every island you visit. If you show up to the next Bahamian island without your cruising permit, they get quite grumpy and ask you why you don’t have it. This happened to me once in Great Harbor and another time in Marsh Harbor. In both cases, I simply assumed they knew what they were doing. My advice to you is this: hold onto your cruising permit and keep it in a safe place your entire trip. Only give it up when you are certain your next hop is the US.
After a full day in Elbow Cay, we flew up to Treasure Cay (MYAT). It’s a 5 minute flight and doesn’t require VFR filing. The airport is simple to negotiate and there is no fuel, but with Marsh so close, it’s not an issue. We spent one day at Green Turtle Cay across the sea and returned to MYAT to clear out. Another lesson here. Clearing out at the time of this writing is $31 per person so $93 and we had just used the last of our cash. There are no ATMs at this end of the island, however, instead of clearing out, we used our cruising permit to fly back to Marsh Harbor where we were able to pay our fees with a credit card. The math worked out well here. A taxi to Marsh and back to find an ATM would have been $85 each way plus the $93, so a $15 worth of fuel for the flight to Marsh was a bargain.
Filling out the C7B outbound is trivial. Again, file EAPIS with the Flashpass App. There are a couple of important notes to help keep you from getting a tongue lashing, some aggressive finger wagging and a massive fine. Point 2 below is not stressed enough among the articles I’ve read in the past.
File EAPIS at least 1 hour prior to departure.
Contact the CBP Customs Border Protection Office by phone at the U.S. airport you plan to arrive at least 4 hours prior. There are limited airports that allow customs arrivals so verify on Foreflight. Those reading carefully noticed that you should likely file EAPIS before you call customs, so the 1 hour is a bare minimum. Allocating a 4 hour minimum would be a safer bet.
<rant> Customs knows we are coming. EAPIS has everything on it. Names, passports, ages, etc. I can’t imagine the purpose of the phone call. Identity cannot be confirmed with a phone call. Scammers prove this daily. What then? Comments welcomed.</rant>
So, it was fun and it was a fair amount of planning and work. Our family did notice that time passed more slowly over the week. We joked that it was because we were sick of each other, but in all seriousness I find that experiencing novelty is one of the keys to longevity. Our minds perceive time differently when we are forced to absorb new information and experience new environments.
I have a bit over 700 hours as a VFR rated pilot in my 2004 DiamondStar DA40. If you are reading this, I hope you’ve been inspired to consider flying to the Bahamas. It’s rewarding and pretty exciting.
Cheers,
Bill Butler