Flying over water and mountains
Up until a few weeks ago I felt confident (not complacent) about flying over water. Whether across the channel (Lydd to L2Q, and IOW to Cherbourg, with life jackets), across the solent or along various coastlines.
I'm a PPL/IMC (SPE), 170 hours over the last 3 years.
3 weeks ago I took a friend for a trip from Blackbushe to Rochester, south and along the coast to Shoreham. My friend is a BA 747 captain and I was interested to know what he thought of my flying. He said "it's fine, you fly like you're driving a car". I probed a little on this, and it turned out he was a tad nervous when I flew along the coast about a quarter of a mile out at 1,000 ft. He's used to four engines and we only had one! He flies a cherokee himself, but is obviously much more cautious about flying over water than me (we had talked earlier about whether I had flown across the channel). Respecting his considerable experience over mine, his approach made me concerned that perhaps I was being a little reckless, even though I was within the rules.
When flying anywhere, I look out for landing spots in case of engine failure, and sometimes conclude, as in the case of flying along the coast, if the engine fails now I'll have to ditch or try to make the beach. If you fly from Welshpool to Caernarvon, the welsh mountains significantly limit where you could land in the event of an engine failure, but many pilots, including me, still do it.
If we followed safety to the extreme, we'd never fly anywhere. An engine failure can happen at any time, but does this mean we should avoid water and mountains completely?
So, to the questions. How do you make judgements about the terrain you fly over and what precautions and contingencies do you take? Have you set a 'time over water' limit? What risks, within the law, have you judged it's safe to take?