I'm glad everyone is ok too. The artilce states that the pilot says everything is normal until the gust of wind. If I took off with only 50-100 feet of runway in front of me, I would not say it was normal. I am not float liscensed, but that cannot be a normal takeoff, gust or wind or not. It looks like he was either heavier than he thought he was, the lake was smaller than he remembered it was last time he took off, or the beaver was not swimming as fast as it could.