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		Here is an excerpt from Chapter Eleven, in which I describe being stuck on Petit Bois Island with no food during an unexpected period of bad weather: Weather-bound on an Uninhabited Island   Since the island is actually closer to Dauphin Island, Alabama, than any point on the Mississippi mainland, I decided to drive there to launch my kayak for an overnight trip to Petit Bois.  This was a winter trip, in early February, so I expected harsh conditions and hoped to find solitude.  I parked near a commercial fishing dock on Dauphin Island, loaded my gear, and spent the first afternoon paddling along the shore the 11 miles to the west end of that island.  There, I found a secluded spot among the grassy dunes to pitch my tent so I could be rested for the 5-mile crossing to Petit Bois early the next morning.   From this point I could see the hazy blue hump that was the “little woods” on Petit Bois.  The rest of the island was too low to appear on the horizon from that distance.   When morning came I was surprised to find a dense fog had moved in over the Gulf waters and I could no longer see either Petit Bois or the mainland to the north.  I broke camp and launched the kayak anyway, confidently following my deck-mounted compass on a course of 250 degrees, where I knew Petit Bois had to be.  This was among my first few open water crossings in a kayak, and the first in fog.   Handheld GPS receivers were not yet heard of.  It soon became unsettling after Dauphin Island had disappeared in the mist behind me and there was nothing all around but gray water and gray sky.  There was little if any wind, so the surface of the sea was smooth, yet it moved under my hull in great undulating swells from the open Gulf.  Throughout the crossing I heard the weird, laughing calls of loons, coming from somewhere nearby but out of sight in the fog.  I began to doubt my compass.  Though I was following the course I knew to be correct from the charts and from my visual sighting of Petit Bois the night before, it just didn’t seem right.  It felt more like I was paddling a great, curving arc of a circle rather than a straight line compass course.  I stopped paddling after an hour to drift and eat a high-energy snack for paddling fuel.  As I drifted, I debated whether I should continue on blindly in the fog or turn back for Dauphin Island before it was too late.  My greatest fear was that I was not really headed for Petit Bois, but was instead somehow on course for the open sea, being pulled south of the pass between the two islands.  I dug out my chart and checked the compass bearing again to be sure.  Despite the nagging doubts and some instinctive distrust of the compass in these conditions, I knew that a magnetic compass could not lie, and I knew I would have to have faith and believe in it to reach my destination.  I started paddling west again, determined to stay on course, and after another hour the fog began to lift and I could see the pine trees and white sand dunes of a deserted island dead ahead.   I landed on a desolate stretch of beach and walked around, noting the absence of any human footprints other than my own.  It was obvious that no one had been there lately, probably because of the time of year.  I found a good place to set up camp and spent the rest of the day walking the island and looking around.  I had planned to spend one night on Petit Bois and return the next day to my car, so I had brought just enough food for that length of time.   I learned a valuable lesson about paddling to remote islands from this trip, when I awoke the next morning to discover that a raging cold front had moved into the area and the wind was blowing out of the north at 25 to 30 knots.  I had not gotten a marine forecast before the trip, and did not foresee any conditions that would prevent me from returning on schedule.  Now the Mississippi Sound was a boiling cauldron of breaking whitecaps, and freezing temperatures combined with the north wind made the prospect of paddling anywhere seem ludicrous.  I ate the last two packets of instant oatmeal I had for breakfast and began to wonder what I would eat while waiting for this weather to change.  And how long would it be before it did change?  I had little experience on the islands at that time, and I had no idea.   At least I had found the solitude I was seeking.  There was no sign of human life anywhere.  No boats of any kind were visible on the horizon, just endless lines of churning whitecaps as far as I could see.  I resigned myself to a longer stay on the island than I had planned.  There was nothing else to do but explore my surroundings, so I set out on foot to see what I could find.  The forest of pine trees drew my attention first, so I hiked over there and found dense thickets of small pines growing on the rolling sand dunes.   Clumps of prickly pear cactus gave the island a desert feeling and reminded me of the pine and cactus covered hills of New Mexico.  Away from the shore among the trees, the sound of crashing waves was diminished, and the interior of the island was much more peaceful than the shoreline.   Areas of marsh with deep standing water forced me to make long detours, but I was able to walk over every part of the island in a day.  There was nothing else to do.  I looked over the debris and manmade junk that had washed ashore from the sea.  There was nothing that I could find a use for in a few short days, but there was enough good lumber for a modern-day Robinson Crusoe to build a fine house, if he had a mind to stay awhile.   I had no fishing gear, so that means of getting food was not an option.  There were lots of ducks and rabbits on the island, but likewise, I had no way of catching one.  I turned my attention instead to wild plant food.  Two species that I knew I could eat were abundant – the fruit of the prickly pear cactus and the tender young shoots of cattails, which grew thick in the marshes.  The prickly pears required some careful work to peel without getting fingers full of tiny spines, but the fruit was good.  To get the cattail shoots, I waded into the mud and pulled them up near the base.  With the green exterior peeled away, these yielded succulent white inner stems that are quite good even eaten raw.   I also worried about my water supply, as I had not brought enough for an extended stay.  I had remembered reading about beach wells in a survival manual, so I started digging about twenty feet back from the water’s edge on the sound side of the island.  I used my cooking pot to scoop out the sand, and soon had a hole about three feet deep.  At this depth, it began to fill with water.  The first scoops of this were brackish, and then to my surprise and delight, the water filling the hole tasted fresh and completely drinkable.  Apparently sandy islands like this hold a supply of rain water that has a accumulated over time and sits on top of the underlying brackish water.  At least my water worries were over, and there was something to eat, even if it wasn’t everything I wanted.   The next day the wind and waves had not abated at all.  There was no way I was going to be leaving the island.  This was starting to be inconvenient.  I had a meeting I was supposed to attend that night, and other people would be wondering where I was.  This was years before the advent of cell phones, so I had no way to contact anyone and let them know why I was overdue.  I was starting to realize that travel by small boat on the sea could not be done on a schedule, and that commitments on land meant little out here.   With nothing else to do, I set out walking again and retraced my steps of the previous day.  I looked through the flotsam and jetsam for anything new, and spent time just staring out to sea on the sound side at the walls of breakers rolling in to the beach.  By that afternoon the wind seemed to decrease somewhat, and throughout the night it gradually tapered off.  When I crawled out of the tent on my third morning on Petit Bois, there was still a good chop in the sound, but the waves were smaller and less menacing.  I knew the kayak could handle these conditions, though it would be a cold and wet ride.   My planned stay of one night on Petit Bois island had turned into three, and it was time to leave.  The crossing back to Dauphin Island was uneventful.  I had discovered a wilderness island close to home, and had even gotten a taste of what it’s like to be marooned.  I knew from that moment on that I would never again paddle to a remote island without extra supplies and a flexible schedule that allowed for nature’s unexpected whims.