Cemetery Approach

In Rangeley, they sometimes use an approach called the "cemetery Approach" (so named due to flight over a cemetery on final). The goal is to touch down in a cove with no risk of running in to the opposite shore. There's maybe a half mile of water, so landing there isn't particularly tight, but I don't know that there is enough water to take off in that distance.

This approach is useful when the wind is from the east. I did the approach and landing once, passing near a boat and touching down just after it. I was a bit concerned about landing with plenty of room to spare, but I setup the approach to pass just above the trees at the water's edge and the subsequent landing was no problem.

Sailing

Sometimes, it's just too windy to turn a float plane away from the wind to approach a dock or beach. In that case, just put it in reverse or travel sideways. Floatplanes naturally weathervane into the wind, and are so willing to do so that it can be hard to stop them from turning. In a strong wind, one uses weathervaning to advantage by pointing the plane into the wind, reducing power to idle, and then letting the plane be blown backwards. Speed up the process by holding the doors open, or steer by opening one door or the other or by using the water rudders. The keels on the floats help control direction so you can go backwards in one direction or another.

The plane can be induced to go sideways by using the engine to hold it in one spot against the wind and then by using a door or the rudders to angle the plane off wind. It will then travel sideways under engine power, but it won't go forward or backward if the throttle power matched the wind power.

We did a bit of sailing in a fairly light wind, but it was enough to get the idea.

After sailing, we docked twice. Once on my side and once on the passenger's side. When docking alone or on the pilot's side, the pilot has to be ready to get out of the plane, down on the float, and onto the dock without letting the plane blow away (especially if the plane is full of passengers). When docking on the passenger's side, it's a lot harder to see when the pontoon is going to touch and the passenger has to be capable of helping.

My dockings were generally good. Today, during docking practice, I hit the dock moderately hard and the plane bounced off the protective tires on the dock(my instructor snickered.) We had to wait a bit for the plane to blow back to the dock, but an on-shore wind helped a lot (otherwise, I'd have had to restart the engine.)