So...This past week I was on vacation at Pawley's Island, SC. Because it's an island, there is a tidal creek that feeds into a saltwater marsh. When the tide comes in, the creek flows one way, and when the tide goes out it flows the other way. The house we rent has a dock on the creek.
We decide to rent kayaks. The plan is to ride current out to the mouth of the inlet, hang out for a bit and ride the tide current back to the house. But when we get to the sea, the breakers didn't look bad at all - so we decide to try to get past them and out to sea (the kyaks are designed for open-sea).
We get about 20 feet into the breakers and a wave gets my nephew sideways, the next puts him into my son and I, and the third capsizes him. There's also a strong current out to sea, so he's hanging on to the kyak, and starting to drift away. So I hand my oar to my son and tell him to get back to the beach. (He does). And I swim over to the nephew and flip the kyak over, grab the oar, and help him back in, and send him back to shore as well.
He almost gets back to shore, but a wave rolls him again. Thankfully he can touch now. But I see my hat and kyak floating away. So I swim to catch the kyak. I didn't get the hat. I get back on shore breathing hard.
That's when I realize that I lost my phone. My wife wanted me to take it, and had put it in a ziplock bag. Apparently it was water-tight and it had floated out of my pocket while I was swimming around like a crazy person.
We row back to the house via the creek, safe and sound except for my hat and phone.
Meanwhile my wife has been tracking the journey and getting very strange readings on our whereabouts. We go looking for it - but because there's only one cel tower, the accuracy is like a 1-2 mile radius. We give up.
Because my phone acts as my wallet, we are in the process of cancelling the credit cards when my wife's phone rings. It's "me". We hang up on the bank. All we can hear is wind and water and seagulls and what sounds like a tapping noise. "A seagull has pecked the right spot on the screen", is what we're thinking. That goes on for 30 seconds - no answer to our repeated "Hello?"s. We hang up. A minute later, it rings again! This time there's a "HEEELLLOOO??!!" on the other end.
Turns out, a kite surfer has picked up the phone. He gives us his number, and then asks "Did you have a hat too?" I say "YES!" He says "I didn't get the hat". I tell him to enjoy his ride and text us when he gets back in.
Through a series of texts, we come to understand that he was a mile and a half out to sea on his kitesurfing ride, and he sees the corner of the plastic bag sticking up a couple of inches from the water. He went closer to investigate what he thought was a weird jellyfish, and discovered the phone and the hat. He picked up the phone - and after our conversation went back to get the hat. He left them both at the security desk of the resort where he was staying. In lieu of reward, we let him know we are donating to the Women's Shelter of Charlotte who loan women phones to help them break contact with abusers.
I haven't finished calculating the odds, but I'm pretty sure there's a LOT of zeros in that math!
I bought a lottery ticket (I didn't win).