I'm guessing here... that he went out to see the same sunset as the lady was watching over the web cam. The puzzling fact is that if the sunset is anywhere near interesting you can usually see a faint glow on the sky in the direction long time after the sun actually has gone down (at least at the latitudes we are discussing here). That glow should be a pretty reliable direction indicator => West is THERE, ok the coast should be somewhere in that direction.

But - who are we to know he possessed enough orienteering skills to pull off the above line of reasoning?

After all, who wants to stare at a sunset web cam if there is no glow in the sky? A totally black screen is not very interesting... Most likely, he lost sight of land in the twilight and didn't think of or did not want to wander off in on the rather vague direction provided by "west there - land that way" kind of reasoning.

Getting lost in flat terrain with just minor "bumps" is surprisingly easy. To find shore, you have to distinguish between snow covered "semi-flat" ice (with snow drifts, ice pileups, ridges and so on" and snow covered "semi-flat" terrain (with snow drifts, rocks and so on). That can be hard enough in daylight and next to impossible in twilight - all you see in ANY direction is a flat world with snow drift piles and some ice ridges poking through.