Mary,

I had my life vest on... but get this. I took it off... so I could swim faster and try to catch the boat as it rounded up (I thought it would, but never happened). In the panic, I didn't go back for the vest, so I swam. I watched my boat drift all the way to the beach. One of the kids in our fleet found it a couple hundred yards down the beach and sailed it back to our camp site. The people on the beach saw the boat sail up. It has a really steep beach, so when the kid said I was missing, they said, no... we just saw him sail in (they could only see the top of the sail). He explained that he sailed it over. So, I see about 6 boats leave the beach and sail out into the bay and fan out. It is a huge bay... they never found me. Finally when I was about a quarter mile off the beach I was able to flag down another boat and get a ride in. After that and then going through the Chubasco storm that hit our Midwinters event down there a few years later, I have a deeper respect for safety gear... including wetsuits. Maybe smoke too? That would have helped a ton.