Low Tide Follies

[CATransplant]

Back when I lived in California, I used to bow fish for small sharks in Morro Bay, just a couple of blocks from home.<br /><br />How this worked was that you went out about an hour before low tide onto the flats in the estuary at the back of the bay in a jonboat. No motor...heck, hardly any water.<br /><br />As the tide goes out, the sharks (leopards, brown smoothhounds, shovelnose guitarfish) make their way to the channels in the estuary. You can see them as they cross the flats in shallow water.<br /><br />As you can imagine, I sometimes found myself stuck out there at low tide. I used to bring a book with me to occupy myself while the tide came back in.<br /><br />This one time, I was stranded on the mud in my little jonboat, out in the middle of the mudflats on the bay. I was reading away, when I heard, "Ahoy, there...you in the jonboat! Do you need assistance?" It was the harbor patrol boat from Morro Bay, about three hundred yards from me in a channel.<br /><br />After I assured them I was OK, they left. Apparently someone on shore had seen me stranded out there and called 911. I don't know what the Harbor Patrol would have done. The bottom of that bay is many feet deep of the slimiest, softest muck on this planet.