I'd arranged for my girlfriend and I to take a scenic seaplane ride over San Francisco. We were in a small plane (a Cessna I think), I sat up front next to the pilot and my girlfriend behind me. We took off from the bay and everything seemed fine, but the pilot took his hands off the controls and reached down to fiddle with something next to my feet. As he did that we picked up speed and headed nose first back to the bay. He looked up, pulled back on the controls for a bit and then went back to whatever it was by my feet. We started back down again and the water is looking very close when he looks up again, grabs the controls and says "Uh, we have a problem". My girlfriend and I exchanged terrified looks and he explains that the rudder was broken and couldn't be raised, while he could fly with it like that, it wouldn't be stable and we should land as soon as possible. We landed safely, but with a broken rudder, navigating on the bay back to the dock was difficult. The pilot apologised and once we got back he insisted we go back out again, but this time in their DeHavilland Beaver, which turned out to be much better.