Water flying offers an awesome new sense of freedom and adventure, and a huge amount of new hazards and gotchas for the poorly trained and practiced.
Happily, within ten minutes flying of my runway at home, I have a dozen lakes to land into. There are a couple of lakes, or areas which are "avoid" for water planes, but that's hardly a problem. I've left a few photos on the photos thread, I'll find a few more to post.
There is a huge sense of improved safety flying even a straight floatplane, if it quits you have so many more choices of where to land. Amphibians even more so.
Along with the freedom comes all kinds of new risks though. I can spend a dozen hours giving a new pilot float training, but then I think about the next 50 hours or so which really should be mentored. It's one thing to have the basic skills to operate the aircraft, but entirely another to know
where to operate it! The fact that you can land on a particular body of water, does not mean that you should! The first thing to think about is that with a few ever so slight exceptions, ever place you would think to land on the water is not a place designed to have aircraft operations, so there is zero aircraft infrastructure there - no windsock, docks or other shore features which may not welcome aircraft, and if something breaks in the plane, repairs are a long, expensive ride away.
That's why, to a large degree, water flying is a team sport - we all help one and other, and watch the other's backs.
My summer trip to the Torngat Mountains at the north tip of Labrador, Canada was a huge team effort - 15 people in 7 planes (I was the only solo). Varying experience, but the least piloting time of the pilots was still hundreds of water hours. Still, lots of communication between planes to assure safety. I carried enough tools and materials to do possible repairs, right up to riveting a patch over a hole in a float/hull. We did get as far as 300 miles away from the nearest town with any help whatever - even going back for something you need is very costly. You've got to be ready to take care of yourself, and the team. No stupid mistakes that'll turn a landing into a crash site, or that one rock near shore into your Costa Concordia! - the big help is a long way away!
The reward is am immense sense of freedom. With planning, and my following advice and a route, I spent a day and night on my own. I camped about 90 miles from the nearest other person - what a feeling!
