A Michigan pilot has achieved his dream of creating his own seaplane base near Vanderbilt, Michigan.
John Marvin has worked diligently for the last two years to get approvals for the new JCM Seaplane Base (MI79).
Marvin, a veteran pilot and A&P, began flying in 1981 in his father’s Cessna 150. Soon after earning his private pilot certificate, he realized he was putting his life in the hands of people he didn’t know, so he went to an A&P school in Florida. While there, he earned his seaplane rating at Jack Brown’s Seaplane Base in Winter Haven, Florida.
He then traveled to Alaska, where his sister lived. He spent a year there, racking up 1,000 hours of “Alaska time.”
Wanting to work for the airlines, he returned to Michigan and enrolled in an aviation program at Western Michigan University. He earned his multi-engine rating and eventually began working as a “freight dog,” a job that lasted 13 years. During that time he worked his way up to flying the Boeing 737-300.
“Then the bottom fell out,” he said. “In 2008 I lost everything when the company went bankrupt and out of business.”
He flirted with the idea of getting a seaplane flying job, but recalls that there were “three accidents all within three weeks of each other” at the companies he applied to.
“I was unwilling to give my life flying seaplanes,” he said. “As I’m getting older, I decided to fly seaplanes for my own satisfaction and not for a living.”
Fueled by a dream of flying on and off the water, he said he looked at his assets and realized he could use his cabin on a lake — “my own slice of Heaven” — to create the seaplane base.
He filed his application with the state Feb. 2, 2022. Soon after that, he got a sign that he was on the right track.
“I was mowing the grass at my local airport and saw a floatplane getting fuel. I went over to talk to the pilot and I told him that I had started the process with the state of Michigan for a seaplane base and that I was going to have a party to celebrate its birthday,” he recalled. “Well, it ended up I was talking to the chairman of the board of the Seaplane Pilots Association! Was this meant to be?”
“A week later a turbine Seawind amphibian stopped in to get fuel,” he continued. “I went over to him and told him what I was doing and he says ‘well, if you have it during the Oshkosh air show I will be there.’”
Marvin hopes to establish an annual Splash-In every year for planes en route to Oshkosh and flying home from the big show.
“The plan is to have a stop-over point for seaplanes that are going to and from EAA AirVenture Oshkosh,” he said, adding he hopes to gather input from pilots on future needs and improvements needed in developing the seaplane base. “The goal is to make this a permanent annual celebration and a place for pilot getaways during the seaplane flying season.”
To learn more about the seaplane base, you can contact Marvin at 989-600-5031.
