Guide

Getting There: Access, Jetties, Airstrips and Helipads

An island is only as private, as usable and as sellable as its arrival. Before the house, before the view, comes the plainer question of how a person, a crate of provisions or a doctor actually reaches the shore. This is an orientation to the ways on and off a private island, and to what each of them costs to build and to keep.

Most first conversations we have about an island concern the villa, the beach and the water colour. The more useful conversation concerns the last mile. A property that photographs beautifully but can only be reached in calm weather, on a spring tide, by a shallow tender, is a different asset from one with a sheltered deep-water approach and a serviceable strip. Access shapes the running cost, the insurability and, in the end, the resale value. It is worth understanding before an offer, not after.

An island is bought with the eyes and lived in with the tide table. The difference between the two is the cost of getting there.

Boat access and the tide

For the great majority of private islands, the boat is the road. The quality of that road depends on three things that a survey will reveal and a brochure will not: the depth of water at the approach, the shelter of the anchorage from the prevailing swell, and the range of the tide.

Depth governs what can come alongside. A shallow, coral-fringed lagoon may only admit a flat-bottomed tender drawing half a metre, which in turn limits what can be landed and when. A natural deep-water channel that carries three to four metres at low water is a genuine asset, because it lets a larger, more sea-kindly boat run in most conditions and allows a supply vessel or a visiting yacht to come close. Where the depth is not naturally present, it can sometimes be dredged, but dredging near reef is among the most heavily regulated and slowest-permitted marine works anywhere in the tropics, and should never be assumed.

Tidal range is the quieter variable. In much of the Caribbean the range is modest, often under a metre, which keeps jetty design simple. In parts of the Bahamas, and in tidal regions more broadly, a two-to-three-metre swing means a fixed jetty is high and dry at low water and awash at spring high; the answer is usually a floating pontoon on piles that rides the tide, which costs more. Understanding the local range is the first design decision, not an afterthought. Our regional notes on the Bahamas and the wider Caribbean give a feel for how different these conditions are within a short flight of each other.

Building a jetty or dock

A jetty is the single most valuable piece of infrastructure most islands can add, and the most exposed. It is the thing the sea attacks first. Broadly there are three forms: a fixed pile jetty on driven timber, concrete or steel piles; a floating pontoon tethered to piles or a mooring; and a simple stone or concrete landing for the smallest sites.

The figures above are the mainland baseline. On a remote island they are the beginning of the sum, not the end of it. The reason is mobilisation: a pile-driving rig, a work barge and a crew have to be brought to a place with no road, housed and fed, and demobilised again. It is not unusual for the logistics of reaching the site to cost as much as the physical structure. A modest, well-built jetty on an accessible island might land in the low hundreds of thousands; a substantial deep-water berth capable of taking a supply boat and a visiting yacht, engineered to survive a design storm, runs well into seven figures once mobilisation, engineering and permitting are counted.

Permits and the foreshore

Almost everywhere in the tropics, you do not own the sea, and often you do not own the beach below the high-water mark. The foreshore, the strip between high and low water, is commonly Crown land, state land or public trust land. This has a direct consequence: to build a jetty that necessarily crosses the foreshore and sits in the seabed, you usually need a foreshore lease, licence or occupation permit from the state as well as an environmental consent for works over reef or seagrass. These are separate from any planning permission for buildings on the dry land. They can take many months and, in sensitive marine areas, may be refused. A prudent buyer confirms what marine consents already exist, and what is realistically obtainable, before contracts. This is precisely the kind of point our acquisition brief is built to surface, and it belongs in the island dossier for any serious candidate.

• Foreshore ownership and whether a marine lease exists or is obtainable
• Environmental consent for works over coral, seagrass or mangrove
• Design storm the structure is engineered to survive
• Whether the approach carries adequate depth at low water
• Access for the construction barge itself

Airstrips

An airstrip changes the character of an island. It converts a place reached only by a long boat transfer into somewhere a light aircraft can deliver guests and provisions directly. Not every island can have one; you need the length, the flat ground and the approach clear of obstructions.

A simple, unpaved turf strip for single-engine aircraft typically costs in the region of USD 50,000 to 150,000 to clear, grade for drainage and seed, with drainage and earthworks, not the surface, being the real expense. As a rule of thumb a private strip wants at least around 500 feet of usable length and 50 feet of width at the absolute minimum, and considerably more, commonly 700 metres or so, to operate a capable single or a small twin with any margin in tropical heat and humidity, both of which lengthen the ground roll. A sealed asphalt runway is a wholly different undertaking, an order of magnitude more expensive, and only justified where a turbine aircraft is the point.

Licensing matters as much as construction. Even a private strip generally has to be registered or licensed with the national civil aviation authority, sited clear of obstacle limitation surfaces, and, if it is ever to see charter or turbine traffic, held to a higher standard of survey, marking and fire cover. Ongoing maintenance, cutting, rolling, drainage clearance and keeping the approach vegetation down, is a permanent line in the budget that new owners routinely underestimate.

Helipads and seaplanes

Where a full strip is impossible, a helipad is often the answer, and for many owners it is the preferred arrival in any case. A basic lighted, ground-level concrete pad sized for a light piston helicopter can start around USD 15,000 in mainland terms, with a more complete ground-level installation, proper surfacing, lighting, drainage, wind indicator and a small approach, more realistically in the tens of thousands, from roughly USD 50,000 upward. Elevated or over-water platforms, with the structural reinforcement they demand, run far higher, into the hundreds of thousands. Wherever it sits, the civil aviation authority will generally require notification and often formal approval of a permanent landing area, and neighbours and environmental regulators can weigh in.

The seaplane occupies a useful middle ground: it needs no runway, only sheltered water and a way ashore, which is why it is the workhorse of atoll destinations. It is worth knowing the economics before relying on it. In the Maldives, scheduled seaplane transfers run from around USD 290 to 900 per person return depending on the resort, while a private seaplane charter can range from roughly USD 1,200 to 15,000 each way according to distance and aircraft. Those are recurring numbers, paid on every arrival and departure, and they compound quickly for a household that comes and goes.

Access, value and insurability

Access is not only convenience; it is written into the valuation and the insurance. A well-found jetty and a serviceable strip widen the pool of future buyers and shorten the time a resale sits on the market, which is why we treat access as a value driver rather than a cost centre in the quiet market. Insurers, for their part, price the difficulty of reaching a property. A remote island where a loss adjuster, a repair crew or a fire response cannot easily arrive is a harder risk to write, a theme we return to in storms, insurance and resilience. Good access lowers that friction.

Medical evacuation

The most serious reason to think hard about access is the one nobody wants to plan for. On a remote island, a medical emergency is a logistics problem before it is a medical one, and the plan has to exist before it is needed. Air ambulance is expensive and highly variable: a helicopter medevac commonly runs USD 12,000 to 25,000, a longer fixed-wing transfer readily exceeds USD 50,000, and an international repatriation can reach USD 100,000 or more, with per-mile pricing often in the USD 50 to 350 range. The practical answers are a membership with a reputable global evacuation provider, a documented plan naming the nearest capable hospital and the aircraft that would fly the leg, a helipad or cleared area that can take a helicopter at night, and a boat kept fuelled and ready. This is not a luxury; on an island it is part of the definition of habitable. It bears on staffing too, since someone has to be trained and present to run the plan, which we cover in staffing and running a private island.

Access, in short, is the discipline that turns a beautiful position into a workable home. It runs through the whole decision, from the first survey to the day-to-day, and it connects to almost everything else, to costs, to how the purchase is structured, and to what can be built once the barges can reach the shore. When you are ready to test a specific island against these questions, or to register an island you already have in view, our office is glad to help you read the tide table before you read the brochure.

General orientation, not legal, tax or insurance advice. Enquiries: the enquiry form.