Private Island(Reduced Price ) for Sale in Bahamas

Tropical Island Paradise Is Just Minutes From Florida

Sandy Cay is approximately 6-7 acres in size.

It is the closest island to the United States, just 56 miles from Palm Beach, Florida. Its beaches are unspoiled beautiful white sand, free from tar and debris. Perfect location? Absolutely: Because Sandy Cay is so near to Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami and just seven miles NNW of the Island of Grand Bahama – it couldn’t be more convenient. One easily can dash to the island (via Freeport and West End, Grand Bahama, by sea or by air, and a short comfortable boat-ride across the calm Bahama Flats). Customs, fuel and other basic supplies are readily available right there at Old Bahama Bay, West End, Grand Bahama.

Sandy Cay is also just over 8 miles from the exciting new Ginn Sur Mer Resort being developed near West End. Grand Bahama. This is a $4.9 BILLION Resort that will include and exquisite 2,500-room hotel, new deep water marina, a 55,000 square foot casino, golf course, air strip and many other fabulous features and amenities. And this is just minutes from your perfectly secluded Sandy Cay whenever you want to 'rejoin civilization'! Construction of this fabulous pocket of luxury is already under way!

Unlike many Bahamian locations, this one has no mangrove or swampland, and sand overlies a solid coral rock base. Sandy Cay is one of the fortunate Islands in the Commonwealth of the Bahamas to be bounded on all sides by the sea at High Water Mark.

What an exotic history! Sailing charts of Spanish galleons and treasure maps of pirates called this island “Scald Cay” which meant “bald” and aptly described its original barrenness. In later years it was renamed Sandy Cay, but not until the fertile hands of Bertie and Beaman Dawes had passed over the island, after which the universal reference was “The Paradise of the Bahamas.”

The Cay is a lovely bar of sand, approximately six to seven acres in size. You would think it would float with the tides, but fortunately and permanently Sandy Cay is anchored by a small outcropping of coral rock exposed on the north and south shores. A short seven miles to the southeast, across water of two fathoms depth, lies Grand Bahama Island and the village of West End, the newer development of Old Bahama Bay and the much anticipated Ginn Sur Mer - a $5 billion Hotel/Casino development on Grand Bahama Island. Three miles to the south is Wood Cay. All else is water: The deep blue Gulf Stream forms the western horizon, beyond which Florida and Palm Beach hide, a scant fifty-six miles away.

Take a moment to savor the story of the transformation of Sandy Cay from baldness to the island of dreams, crowned by gracious trees and flowering shrubs, fringed by white sand beaches resting in a sea of ever changing blues.

Early history is obscure. Without observing harbor and substantial vegetation, buccaneers and pirates would have sailed by without a pause, unless perchance in search of water. In later years, natives from Grand Bahama and as far away as Abaco Island made use of the land, and the King did grant the land “subject to the long established right of spongers and fisherman to land on the Cay and obtained water there from, and to maintain sponge corals on the seashore.”

Updating the colorful history: In the days of prohibition, West End’s immediacy to the U.S. gave it a geographical advantage. Here was a major bootlegging base from which contraband liquor was flown in by fast sea planes to Florida, skimming the wave tops to avoid detection, landing on backwoods lakes where cargo was quickly unloaded and trucked out before the “revenuers” could interfere. On the return trip to West End, Sandy Cay was the first landfall, since by this time it boasted two gracefully tall coconut palms rising above the horizon, marking the way, as the low flying plans darted into safety.

Upon repeal of prohibition in the States, bootleggers departed from West End and with them went a major source of livelihood of the natives. Compounding their woes, ailments struck the sponges that inhabited the seas. The natives of West End no longer prospered. They substituted fish, lobster, conch, turtle, and a small amount of corn and vegetables. For a few years, a crawfish canning plant was operated … but crawfish are difficult to catch and this industry did not flourish.

During the reign of King George the Fifth of Great Britain this “Jewel of the Bahamas” was a Crown Grant sold in 1930 to Harold George Christie for 150 British Pounds. The actual wording: “This deed dated the 19th day of March 1930 was a grant to Harold George Christie from George V., King, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland, and the British Dominions beyond the seas, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India. Annual rental is due to the British Crown in the amount of one peppercorn, if the same shall be lawfully demanded.” Apparently Harold Christie of Nassau was simply a conduit to transfer the island to the Dawes family for some obscure political reason, as, nine months after the sale to Christie, on 15 December 1930 the “fee simple ownership” was transferred to Beaman Gates Dawes. Its ownership, being “Fee Simple”, isn’t typical of most private ownership of land in the Bahamas.

Beaman Gates Dawes was the brother of Charles Gates Dawes, United States Ambassador to Great Britain in 1929-1932. In 1929, Nobel Laureate, Charles G. Dawes, the 30th Vice-president of the United States (under President Calvin Coolidge 1925-1929), was newly appointed to Great Britain and his brother was granted this “Jewel of the Bahamas.”
Beaman and his wife Bertie caused to be planted sundry and various trees, shrubs, and flowers, which came to grow in profusion. They also built a house and dug a fresh water well. On December 10th, 1959 Henry Dawes, son of Beaman, purchased Sandy Cay under specific authorization by an order from the Supreme Court of the Bahama Islands.

At one time, the Cay was home to the Grant family, caretakers of the island for the Dawes family. Henry Dawes, who did botanical research on the island and who is associated with the famous Dawes Arboretum outside of Columbus, Ohio, beautifully landscaped Sandy Cay. At that time, there was a beautiful arcade of Australian pines, stretching from the fresh water well to the westernmost point of the island. The island was planted with grass and people often were photographed playing croquet on the lawn.

Later in the twentieth century the island became the property of Bahamian Alvin Tucker of Freeport, who purchased several outstanding islands, and selected this one as the appropriate “jewel” for his daughter and son-in-law, Dr. Robert Antoni, as a wedding gift. After discussions of having some family members building on Sandy Cay, away from their estate at Ridley Head on Eleuthera Island, the Antoni family eventually decided to sell the island to keep the Antoni family united.

Since 1979 the island has been owned fee simple by another group. In August and September 2004, for the first time in over 56 years, Sandy Cay suffered direct hits by hurricanes (Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne, respectively), sustaining substantial losses to its vegetation; but the island maintains its same appeals and potentials as when the Dawes Family took it over back in 1930.

The future? Ahh, that is up to you and your imagination!

In short (and sweet):

SANDY CAY, with its colorful and well-documented history, is a unique and unusually desirable Bahamian island due to its proximity to Florida and its advantageous fee simple ownership. The island needs only a fresh vision to further its wonderful history.





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Seller's Agent and the Seller's Agent shall not be liable for the accuracy of same ------



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