A long weekend to Pig Beach from Nassau

The beach picnic, on a sandbar or in your own bay

The crew land a table, chairs, umbrellas and a kitchen and cook lunch there, with the yacht in view. Ellie's favourite is the little bay at Pipe Cay, but the Exumas have more picnic beaches than we could list, and a sandbar that only exists at low tide is the Bahamas version.

The float-off day

Ellie's ritual. Every toy that floats goes in the water: the pool detached from the boat, the mats, the loungers. The esky goes in with them, and everyone drifts off together for the afternoon with drinks and snacks and nothing to do. Any yacht with floating mats can do it; the ones with a sea pool do it best.

The toys, every day

Jet skis for the creeks and the sandbars, seabobs, paddleboards, wakeboards, the slide if the yacht has one. In the Exumas the water is the whole point, and the crew have the toys in by the time breakfast is cleared.

Fly to the boat

A seaplane or a propeller flight from Nassau to Staniel Cay takes forty minutes and lands you a tender ride from the yacht. For a short trip it buys you a day; for a longer one it means the boat is already in the cays when you arrive.

• Nassau to Staniel Cay in forty minutes
• Nassau to North Eleuthera in thirty
• Helicopter from Nassau for the biggest groups

A night in Nassau, before or after

If the flights give you a night in the capital, we know how to spend it. Lunch at the Fish Fry on Arawak Cay, at Oh Andros, for the conch salad: go hungry, the plates are enormous, and bar-hop down the strip afterwards. The long slide at Atlantis for anyone who wants it, and Nobu there if the group wants Japanese. Then dinner at Graycliff, with its private room in a cellar of a quarter of a million bottles and the piano bar after. Wine lovers, this is your night. Over Christmas and New Year the night to be in Nassau is Junkanoo, the costumed street parade on Boxing Day and New Year's Day from two in the morning.

• Oh Andros at the Fish Fry, in the daytime
• The slide at Atlantis
• Graycliff: the cellar room and the piano bar

A day's sport fishing

For keen fishers. We arrange a professional fishing tender with its own fishermen to run alongside the yacht for a half or full day: wahoo, mahi-mahi and tuna off the drop-off into Exuma Sound, bonefish on the flats, marlin off Bimini and Chub Cay in season. Ellie's family do it on every Bahamas trip.

• Half or full day, from the anchorage
• The Exuma Sound drop-off is minutes away
• Bonefishing on the flats for the patient
• The galley cooks the catch that night