in 20+ knots. The diesel just died all of a sudden. Way too close to rocks, the wind direction made it challenging, and the tide was coming in, setting him toward rocks on shore. He tacked away successfully, and entered the marina under tow (by inexperienced marina kids, who evidently gunned the engine at the wrong time, sending the sailboat into the docks planks --no damage to the boat, but broke some dock boards!).

He later determined the boat had run out of fuel. Fuel gauge showed half full when they had taken off earlier, when the boat was in the slip; in fact, the tank was nearly empty at the time...

My fuel gauge is a dipstick. I once looked into those vacuum-type (?) fuel gauges, which are apparently quite accurate and mechanically simple (i.e., fewer things to go wrong), but was put off by the price (several hundred dollars).