Aviation writers love to heap undiluted praise on the sheer fun of flying seaplanes. OK, I get it already. Float and boat flying is a ton of fun and you haven’t lived until you’ve done it. The question is, how to do it without spending a fortune and what to do with it after you’ve got it.
A rating course I recently completed, to be blunt, sheds light on neither, but it did serve to illuminate a poorly understood fact about the sport pilot rule: It has a gap in it that allows an easier path to getting your sea legs without the commitment of lots of training and an FAA checkride.