and I'm a lying dog or maybe a slight prevaricator of the truth. One time I was motoring up the coast of California one night using only piloting skills and a depth sounder at night in the fog so thick I could only see a boat length. I almost ran into a red buoy marked with a white number 5. Their shouldn't have been anything in the area as I was following the 8 fathom curve somewhere between Oceanside and Dana Point. I had hit the coast somewhere south of Dana Point with a plan to turn north until I found the harbor. I checked and checked but I couldn't find anything on the chart so I started looking north of Dana but their wasn't anything north either and while drifting around trying to figure out where I was I almost drifted into a pier. That really freaked me out! I had been up and down that coast many times and their "wasn't no damn pier!" I felt like I was in the twilight zone. I called the Coast Guard and asked them if they could help me locate a pier marked with a red 5 and was told that the buoy "must be off station". I told him it was making the end of a pier and was told that there wasn't a pier in the area. When I told him I was looking at one he just said "I don't know what to tell you" and to "call again if I got in trouble ". I was now totally lost and confused so I found my 8 fathom curve and continued north. At least I had compass north. I eventually almost ran into the Dana Point bell bouy, turned around and found the harbor. The next day I drove down the coast to try and find the damn pier and discovered that they were building the San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant. They had built a pier to off load the reactors and apparently never told the Coast Guard. That totally hosed me up. I have to say that I about as confused as I ever was. Tha fact that I was in my own back yard only made it worse. If I had been somewhere new I think I could have gotten my head around it much more easily. They don't call it "dead" reckoning for nothing.