Bahamas Island Hopping Video

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Flying Phanatic

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Flying Phanatic

Sitting around the airport back in October, we were discussing cool places to fly. The Bahamas came up, and at first was considered a bucket list idea. Being from Michigan, it seemed like the logistics of making a flight like this was too far out of reach, and expensive. November rolled around and I found myself relocating to sunny south Florida. Once I got down here, I immediately started looking for a flight school that would rent their aircraft. I found a great little setup at North Perry, and after hanging around talking to other pilots I soon realized that with some planning, maybe the Bahamas trip was actually possible. I spent the month of November trying to prepare and gather as much information as possible. Finally last weekend, that bucket list idea we dreamed up only two months ago was officially checked off the list! My buddy flew commercial down from Detroit Thursday night, we took off Friday morning, & Sunday evening he flew back to 20 degrees and 8+ inches of fresh snow. Now that is going from one extreme to another. Although our trip was short, you'll see we had plenty of time to do many of the Bahamas Must Do's. The water was beautiful, the activities were awesome, and the people we met along the way were amazing. We recorded video of our whole trip which included 11.3 hours of flying time, 14 unique airports, 16 islands (the extra islands were by boat) and all of the cool water activities. All this equates to 110 GB of footage from 5 GoPro Cameras to root through. The plan is to ultimately put each takeoff and landing on YouTube to create a little bit of an airport guide of the Bahamas. Let me know if you have any questions. Cruising the islands in a C172 was a blast and it was a very capable aircraft for our mission. Start planning your Bahamas trip now, you won't regret the experience! Let me know if you have any questions. ~Flying Phanatic
 
very nice!
WOW, 14 airports in 3 days
 
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Great video! looking forward to the rest of them!
 
Flying Phanatic said:
My buddy flew commercial down from Detroit Thursday night, we took off Friday morning, & Sunday evening he flew back to 20 degrees and 8+ inches of fresh snow. Now that is going from one extreme to another.
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Oh man, do I feel his pain. I went from 32C at a beach in Huatulco, Oaxaca, Mexico to -20C in Chicago last weekend...

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Awesome! I dreamt of doing that last year, now you've got me thinking again. Excluding the cost of the rental airplane mind sharing what you think it cost per person?

Where did you stay and what were the daytime temps like? Also, the WX you departed in looked a bit sketchy, were you IFR?
 
Have been to the Bahamas several times,always nice flying and friendly people. Well worth the trip.
 
Badger said:
very nice!
WOW, 14 airports in 3 days
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Yes, We were busy! The plane had a 4 hour per day minimum, so I always try to make sure I get my monies worth. I also like to check off airports as I fly to new places. This was a perfect opportunity to do just that, as I hadn't visited the Bahamas before and there are a bunch of airports in relatively close distance of one another. There scenery wasn't bad either!
 
ytodd said:
Great video! looking forward to the rest of them!
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Thank you. Feel free to subscribe to my YouTube Channel, Flying Phanatic, so you can see each time a new video is uploaded.
 
iflyvfr said:
Awesome! I dreamt of doing that last year, now you've got me thinking again. Excluding the cost of the rental airplane mind sharing what you think it cost per person?

Where did you stay and what were the daytime temps like? Also, the WX you departed in looked a bit sketchy, were you IFR?
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Thanks for watching the video, as well as inquiring about the trip.

We had a notebook to document all of our costs as we incurred them. At the end of the trip we split costs & settled up, and our total for everything came out to be just under $700 per person. We definitely had some extra expenses due to the short amount of time we were in the islands. Instead of renting a boat on our own, we hired a local from Staniel Cay to take us to all the spots we wanted to see. We did this because his boat was faster, bigger, and he knew exactly where to go. We only spent one afternoon in Staniel Cay, so this allowed us to maximize our time. We stayed Friday night at Chamberlain's Cottage Rentals for $150. They are nice, clean, and come with a great view. We ate dinner Friday night, and Saturday morning at the Staniel Cay Yacht Club. It was good to have a nice restaurant to fuel up on some great food to help us keep going.

At North Eleuthera we stayed Saturday night at Tingum Village on Harbour Island for $150. This place was also nice, clean, and included free continental breakfast.

Temperatures each day were in the mid 80's. The weather was unseasonably wet due to a stationary front parking itself over the northern half of the islands last weekend. We did file an IFR flight plan going out to the islands, and on our return trip. This was to lower the inflight work load by not have to worry about reporting when we were crossing into and out of the ADIZ. Most of the pilots fly the Bahamas VFR, and it isn't a problem at all. I'll put together a step by step guide of how to do this based on the information I gathered before our flight.

Let me know if you have any other questions. Once I get a chance to sit down and write up the "How To" guide, I'll post it on here.

http://www.stanielcaychamberlaincottages.com/

http://tingumvillage.com/
 
Wow that's great, FP, not bad $$$ at all! Will look forward to your report, I enjoy reading about real-world seat of the pants adventure and your trip is just the kind of low-key adventure I like..
 
Awesome video buddy, thanks for the post!
 
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