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Fuel
The single biggest cause of engine failure is fuel exhaustion. Stupid pilot tricks. The next biggest cause is continuing to fly, with a failed engine. An engine failure is an emergency, and should be treated as such. You would never consider taking off in a 310 with one engine feathered, yet the accident reports have mulitple incidences of exactly this sort of thing happening. The most recent one I remember was up in BC, 2 years ago, on a short strip. Like the others, it too was fatal.
I, like you, do a fair amount of travel over water, Lake Michigan. I am comfortable doing this, because I have 2 engines. Someplace else I wrote about coming out of PWK, in IMC, at night, and being kept to 3K (2300 AL) for a long time over water. Not an issue for me, I have 2 engines, 2 vacuum pumps, 2 alternators, 2 regulators. All the systems are independent, and interdependent. Mine is a normally aspirated model.
I hope that Bob Cook and Ernie Martin will jump in here, because they both have homes in the Bahamas, and fly, over ocean, a lot. They fly the Skymaster for exactly the reason most of us do, e.g., it's a safer twin. I'm hoping that Brian Von Herzin joins in as well, because Brian has flown his skymaster to Europe, on mulitple occasions. A lot of over water for those trips.
Stupid pilot tricks will get you in trouble, no matter what you fly. I have done a couple, and lived to tell about it, vowing to NEVER do that again. My wife and I enjoy our skymaster, and feel safer in it.
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