On a dark and windy September night in Port San Luis, at 3AM, headed for shore in my 10' inflatable skiff, my outboard motor's built-in (1/3 gal) tank ran out of fuel. My external (3 gal) tank was full and on-board, but not working properly.
In the time it took to try, but fail, to transfer fuel from one tank to another, I was blown out to sea and up the coast, past the end of the pier, past the breakwater, out into the open sea, a distance of about 1.5 nm.
Shortly before dawn I had enough light to see, and managed to pour enough fuel into the built-in tank to get us back to shore. It was a cold and wet trip, into the wind that was still pretty frisky, and the 2-3' wind waves that had cropped up.
Failure to maintain the external tank in working order, failure to drop anchor the moment the outboard died, failure to maintain awareness of my location and the forces that were propelling me and failure to bring any way to communicate on this seemingly routine trip all combined to place my dogs and I in a dangerous situation. An ordeal that lasted for 4.5 hours..
If I hadn't managed to get the engine running again, we would've ended up miles out to sea by the time the weather changed. We were lucky nothing else went wrong.
A boat that was headed straight at us on its way out to sea either didn't see or ignored my distress signal (SOS with a 1000 lumen flash fight.) When you go out on the water, you are on your own.
I now have several new personal rules to prevent such misadventures.
And I fixed the external tank.
(See the long version for full details.)
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