Outside's Go Magazine - Travel and Style for Men

We’re making S-turns over the flat, green expanse of central Florida, looping left and right in a two-seat flying boat called the SeaMax, when Carlos Bessa, a 40-year-old Brazilian entrepreneur, suddenly banks the plane hard to the left. The horizon spins through the windshield as the G-force drains the blood from my face. “Let me do a little water work here,” he says. He cuts the power, and we enter a curving dive around a circular lake. Soon we’re racing a few feet over the wave tops at 60 miles per hour. Bessa pushes in the throttle and we zoom upward, nothing but blue sky ahead, my stomach floating up toward my gullet. He cuts the power again, banks, and lets the nose fall until the windshield is all lake.

He plays around like this for the next half-hour, skimming and climbing, banking and diving along a chain of small lakes that stretches southward through the heart of central Florida. We arc along their shorelines, waggling our wings at bystanders, then zoom up and over the houses and streets and buildings before diving back down to the next lake. At last, Bessa settles the plane in for a landing, and we coast up to the shore. He takes off his shoes, rolls up his pants, and hauls the boat up alongside the fifth tee at the Lake Ashton golf course. Two minutes later, we’re having iced teas on the clubhouse patio, letting the warm breeze dry our feet.

This is flip-flop flying: No need for runways, no need for fields; simply set your wings down just about anywhere you see a patch of blue. Free and easy is the whole point of the SeaMax. With a takeoff weight of just 1,320 pounds, it qualifies as a light sport aircraft, meaning a beginner can qualify for a license to fly it with as little as 20 hours of flight time. As an amphibian, it can either land on water or, with a flick of a switch, lower its landing gear and alight on a grass field or paved runway.

In a state like Florida, that means you have the run of the place. The 400-mile-long peninsula is dotted with ponds, lakes, rivers, and sloughs, and any that are big enough to land on are considered fair game. (Other states are more restrictive.) Add the Keys, and you’ve got another 100 miles of floatable terrain to play in.

“It’s great fun,” says Jay Cutler, an attorney from Canton, Ohio,  who bought a SeaMax last year and flies it out of Fort Myers. “I just like to practice my touch-and-go landings. I hit all the rivers, the quarries, the lakes, the backwater areas. When I want a break, I hit the Sunset Grill on Lake Jackson. There’s a nice beach that I can pull the plane up onto.”

Technically speaking, the SeaMax is a flying boat, meaning it swims on its fuselage rather than on detachable floats. This is the 22nd creation by Brazilian Miguel Rosario, one of the most respected designers in a country that’s emerging as a center of aeronautical innovation. Built in Rio de Janeiro, the SeaMax is a well-established model by light sport aircraft standards, with 90 currently airborne around the world.