[daperrin]

Last thing I want to do is get lost at sea! I have a GPS on my fish finder, pretty common and cheap these days. I always make sure I am tracking my route so I can just follow the line back to my starting point if fog rolls in. If I know its going to be foggy I will use my phone app GPS tracking for a backup in case something were to happy to my fish finder. One time my battery ran out so that got me thinking. Bottom line if you go out in the ocean you have graduated to the big league and need to take precautions. This can be dangerous stuff. I was out a mile or so at La Jolla on a beautiful sunny fall morning. Later that morning I saw a creepy wall of fog rolling over the hills, offshore twords the ocean (very strange). In about 15 min the wind was blowing and you couldn't see more than 50 yards. That was scary. After that I never go out without gps and a VHF radio. Some people don't even have a life-jacket with them, so a few will never learn and one of them will end up on the news every now and then. My favorite weather source is the 'National Weather Service' web site. There is specific information on marine weather that will summarize wind, fog, surf and swell specific for various parts of the So Cal coastal areas.