The Florida West Coast's occasional fogs always bring out the best in the boating community here. I remember one fishing expedition I went on with some friends, in particular. There was a thick fog when we left in the morning, and by the time we got to the launch ramp it still hadn't lifted, but we expected the sun to burn it off so we got underway anyway. Our destination was about four miles from the ramp, but it was easy to locate, a string of spoil shoals marking the channel entrance to the Anclote River. We just sailed a direct compass course to the center of the channel, and when the centerboard started dragging on the bottom we knew we were there and dropped the hook. We had deep water on one side of us, turtle grass flats on the other, and a shoal beneath us. We could cast into a variety of marine environments, and our anchorage in two feet of water protected us from being run over by the inevitable powerboats.

Apparently, a lot of other boaters were expecting the fog to burn off, too. But by the afternoon, it was pretty clear it wasn't going to do that. We could hearing them flying out of the channel on one side of us, but once they got out to deep water, they couldn't find the channel markers to get back home. We could hear them roaring around out in the fog, motoring in circles.It was the kind of day where the Coast Guard earns its money. The fish weren't biting, so after lunch we decided to head back home to the launch ramp, steering a reciprocal to our original course. On the way back in the fog, we ran into a mullet skiff (this waterman was a professional, he knew what he was doing) that advised us that a big sailboat was hard aground on an uncharted shoal, and he gave us a compass course and range in case we wanted to try and give him a hand.

We decided to try and be helpful, so we followed his instructions and by hailing we eventually got a response from the sailboat and tied up alongside. We tried everything, rocking the boat back and forth, running the engine forward and reverse, but she was stuck hard. Unfortunately, during these evolutions, a dangling line from my boat wrapped around the sailer's prop shaft and it almost dragged my liitle boat under! It took me about an hour's worth of repeated dives to untangle the mess, but while I was down there I could see that there was no way we could break that boat loose.
He would have to wait for high tide to float him of. So we were on our way again, but not before we had him lower his anchor into my boat and we carried it off as far as we could into deep water so he would not drift any higher onto the shoal, and so he could kedge himself off after the the tide turned.

Resuming our course, after making a correction for our diversion, we could still hear the power boats running around us like angry bees. They were everywhere, and they didn't seem to be slowing down, in their desperation, to make allowances for the fog. I was wondering if it had been a good idea to get underway in the middle of all this, when a big cabin cruiser came ghosting out of the mist, a portly middle-aged gentleman wearing a captain's hat with a curvaceous babe on the flying bridge beside him. His daughter, no doubt. He asked me for a compass course to the channel entrance, and after consulting my chart (I knew roughly where I was, but not exactly) I told him. He didn't pause to hear my words of caution, that there were shoals around the channel (where we had been fishing) and the entrance buoy had to be approached with caution. He shoved the throttles forward and roared off. We could hear his engines way off in the distance until they raced, then shut off abruptly. He had found the shoal, allright. Now he knew exactly where he was, but he wasn't going anywhere either, until high tide floated him off.

We resumed our course home, and soon we had vistors again. A boatload of hippies, obviously inebriated, and having the time of their lives. They asked me which way to the channel buoy, and I gave them a compass course. They replied that they didn't have a compass, so I suggested they just anchor out until the fog lifted, they could easily run out of fuel looking for the channel. They replied that they didn't have an anchor! They just asked me to point the way to go, and they would find it. I was genuinely worried for these dildoes, now; so I offered to give them some water, I had a two and a half gallon container in reserve and I still had plenty of water and ice left over, but they thanked me and declined my offer. They had plenty to drink, they said, and all waved bottles of Jack Daniels to make their point. They vanished into the mist.

We continued on our course, and our next encounter was with a crab boat, motoring on a reciprocal course to ours; following behind him, was a wagon train of runabouts, ski boats, cabin cruisers, sport fishermen, and other assorted recreational craft, all throttling back their mighty engines so they could stay safely behind the mariner who was guiding them home. We came close enough alongside that the fisherman and I were able to exchange grins.

We had been dead reckoning long enough now that our position was not known very precisely, so we deliberately steered upwind of our estimated course to the launch ramp, so that if we missed it, we could sail downwind along the shoreline until we found it. We got back just before dark, the parking lot at the ramp was filled with cars and worried family members, waiting for their men to come home from the sea.