This is my post for #freewriters 2618 prompt guide me home hosted by @mariannewest
My husband is so much better in a fog than I am. He has ended up in the wrong place before, but it has not happened very often, I could always depend on him to guide me home. But when I started running my own boat, finding my way to where I wanted to go was difficult. I just realized that I have never had a compass on any of my boats. I now have a fishfinder that you can put in waypoints and use it to get back to the waypoint.
I knew I was safe in the river, but how far out of the way have I gone? Our river is only 2 miles wide but it is 150 miles long. On this day, I only needed to go straight across the river. When the fog lifted, I ended up north of where I wanted to go by 3 miles.
It is always nice when you can spot a marker. It could be a slow speed sign or an island and you have to figure out which sign or island it is to tell where you are.
When I find a shoreline I try to stay in sight by getting as close to shore as I can, this works the best as long as you do not want to cross the river.
I remember this day well. I put my boat in the water in Grant, a town to my north, and all I needed to do was go straight across the river. There are islands not far from the boat ramp, I could not see them from the ramp because the fog was super thick.
I slowly headed for the islands and found them with no problems. Now all I needed to do was find the east shore from the islands. I held my breath and headed east from the east side of the island.
I started hearing gunshots and they sounded close, real close. I was so worried because I still could not see the shore. I stopped my boat and drifted with the engine turned off to figure out where the gunshots were coming from. As I drifted along I saw something red floating near my boat. It was a shotgun shell, then I saw another one. I could tell they had not been in the water long, they looked new. I could hear people talking and wondered if they knew I was there. They had to have heard my boat coming their way.
I sat there not knowing what to do. This was before cell phones. I had a CB radio on my boat but I was not going to put over the radio that I was in Grant, in a thick fog with people shooting shotguns and their spent shells drifting by my boat.
So I sat in the bottom of my boat praying until the fog lifted enough to see the shoreline. I was not that far from the shore or the people doing the shooting, they were about the same distance to the north from me as I was from shore. With the fog lifted enough for me to stay along the shoreline, we waved at each other and I went on fishing.
I forgot it was duck season and Grant is one of the last places they are allowed to hunt them. They had their decoys out and they had one on a stick that sat above the water and flapped its wings like it was landing. I had never seen a decoy like that and thought it was cool.