Indiana Jones, you've lived a sheltered life! Meet Pat Magie.
The year is 1955 and the U.S. Marine Corps has just turned Pat loose upon the civilian population. Magie heads to northern Minnesota, where he traps wolves for bounty and leads canoe trips into the wilderness. Highlight of this era is a two and a half month pilgrimage to Hudson Bay and return. A menu of porcupine and rice keeps the Hudson Bay explorers alive while they paddle and portage their canoe throughout the north.
During the Hudson Bay trip, Pat developed a keen interest in the far north. To explore further, he concluded that air travel was the way to go, and so he bought a Piper J-4 Cub with floats. Flying lessons followed, with solo in eight hours and a solo cross-country endorsement obtained aboard a forest service Beaver.
For first solo cross-country, Pat decided upon a lake up north with some duck-hunting thrown in for good measure. Timing could have been better, however, for this lake froze overnight and takeoff from the remote location was not possible. Pat let the lake freeze hard over, chipped the plane out of the ice, coaxed it onto the ice and took off, floats skating across ice until liftoff speed. Upon returning home, Magie landed on ice with the floats, then switched to skis for winter's duration.
After 485 hours of adventures it was time for the commercial check ride. This required a flight from an airport and Pat's first landing on wheels took place this day.
A series of floatplanes followed the Cub- a Stinson, Cessna 180, and Howard DGA15. Pat then added the first Twin Beech ever to operate in the U.S. with floats. The beauty of the Twin Beech was that it could carry two canoes at a time, and his Wilderness Wings thrived, opening up vast portions of Northern Minnesota to adventurous canoe enthusiasts. Pat also sold float-equipped Cessnas, and he could get a plane headed north sometimes in the same day as an order was received.
Alas, the federal government created a wilderness area which eliminated much of his business, so in 1980 Pat headed north to Alaska, flying for some of the same outfits which bought planes from him earlier.
In 1990, Pat Magie visited Hawaii for the first time and decided the place offered promise. It took years working through beaurocratic thickets, but he and his lovely wife have now established their Island Seaplanes business adjacent to Lagoon Drive. The Beaver mostly takes sightseers aloft. The Cessna 206 performs this role as well as giving land pilots a chance to earn a seaplane rating. Pat doesn't believe in quicky courses, and he'll leave you with an impression of glassy-water landings which may save your life someday.