Lost at sea

I need to guess at the exact year but it would have been 1988/9 or thereabouts. I live on the North Kent coast and own a 16ft fishing dinghy which was used back then and is still used today for fishing along the Kent coast, normally off Herne Bay, but on other occasions further along towards Margate and Ramsgate. On the occasion in question I decided to fish a few miles off Broadstairs at a mark called ' The Elbow '. This is clearly marked on the admiralty chart and is I suppose 4 or 5 miles off the coast, maybe 6 miles, in the general direction of France. So with my twin sons who were around 11 or 12 at the time I launched the boat and around 45 minutes later arrived at the general area - and promptly ran out of fuel for the outboard. I had made the cardinal error of not lifting the petrol tank to check for fuel but had simply read the fuel gauge which incorrectly read half a tank when I set off and still read half a tank even though it was empty. There were no mobile phones to slip into a pocket back then. I believe I did have one but it was fixed in the car and not portable so all I had was a pair of oars and some flares. Strangely for the English Channel there seemed very few boats, or none that I could see, and even had one come close enough I was reluctant to send up a flare as I thought this should be an absolute last resort. So we did what we came to do and fished but as the first hour came and went I started to feel very uneasy, two young boys with me in the middle of January and the English coastline now just a thin black line on the horizon as visibility started to get worse. However, about 30 minutes or so later one of the boys said he could see a small red boat and sure enough I looked and there was another dinghy heading in our general direction. I stood up and started to wave an oar around and the dinghy obviously saw this and came over to us. Imagine my delight and extreme surprise to see that the person in the boat was my younger brother Neil who had decided on the spur of the moment to drive 20 miles towing his boat and go fishing in a spot he'd never been to before ( neither had I ). Not only that but at the time he was based in the USA and had come home earlier that week, without my knowledge, and decided to take a fishing trip ! I'm not sure if this is coincidence or divine intervention but the facts are; I decided for whatever reason to fish an area I'd never been to before My brother decided to fish an area he's never been to before I had no knowledge that my brother was even in the UK My brother was unaware that I had taken my boat and kids and gone fishing We both chose the same day and tide to launch the boats Had either of us fished where we normally fish then we wouldn't have seen one another. The sea is a vast and very unfriendly place most of the time and this is the equivalent of meeting a close relative unexpectedly in a foreign city shortly after losing your wallet ! I'm very glad he came along though !