“Victoria Harbour it’s floatplane Golf Kilo November Hotel. We’re 10 miles to the west and we’ll follow the shoreline at one thousand five hundred for Elk Lake and Shawnigan Lake.”

We flew around Victoria! I love the city. I went there with my girlfriend in June. It is a city where you can walk around and you don’t need a truck. That’s fairly rare in North America. Selina and I were sitting on a bench in the harbour watching the seaplanes and boats. I was quiet a bit impressed because she could tell if it was a Beaver or Otter just by its sound. 🙂

I slowly get used to the canadian style on the radio. The last days I became frustrated with my English. My accent got worse or maybe I didn’t listen to myself in the past. I did many calls today and did not too bad. It was not easy though to remember all those weird names of the lakes. Shawnigan Lake, Quamichan Lake, Cowichan Lake, Sooke Lake – now close your eyes and tell me the first one! See? It’s tough. With better flight planning I would do a better job on the radio. But normally I don’t know where we’re going until ten minutes prior to startup. Tom does that on purpose. It is about the first flying job: As a student you have hours to plan a flight but as a commercial pilot you have sometimes only a few minutes.

In Quamichan Lake I had to land and takeoff as short as possible. I was impressed about the performance of the Cessna. After the landing I told Tom we would never get out of a lake that was so small as our landing distance. He looked at me and said: Try it. We pretended the lake was smaller, as reference I tried to takeoff abeam a small island. I taxied to the very end of the lake, turned around and applied full power during the turn into the wind. With full elevator pressure I waited for the plowing attitude and as soon as the splashing water came back to the strut I released back pressure and came onto the step. Keeping the airplane at the correct angle I waited for 40 knots. At this speed I had to force one float out of the water, which meant full aileron and a quick release (don’t dig your wing into the water….). On one float we accelerated much better and we took off over the same distance as we needed for the obstacle landing. I said: Oh, wow. I’m impressed… and Tom smiled. 🙂

That’s how it looks like:

I like it to fly a difficult airplane. Tom is often talking to me during landings and takeoffs which tells me I still have plenty to learn…