I have to face it: I have bad luck with dinghies. In the space of just a few years, I have had not one, not two, but three rowboats go missing — two to theft and one because of my own mistake. None have made it back to me.
It is probably old-fashioned of me to expect a wayward boat to be returned. It seems to me that in earlier times here the discoverer of an adrift watercraft would try to find its owner. And certainly, stealing one would have ranked about as low as horse theft was thought of in the Old West.
Things were going too well Sunday when my latest dinghy disappeared. I had been towing it behind as Cerberus for once cooperated and sailed itself on a broad reach in Cherry Harbor. With my hands free of the tiller, I sat in the companionway and put a splice in an end of rope. But when it came time to tack, the dinghy was gone.
The bay was bumpy that morning and the dinghy had bounced around a bit but had been following along in an orderly way. My mistake was not more firmly cleating off the slippery nylon line between it and Cerberus.
Less than half an hour had passed since I last saw the dinghy and when I called the town police. I asked a dispatcher to let Marine Patrol know, in case anyone reported seeing it. Then I began to search.
The tide was falling, and the wind was from the northeast. The dinghy could not have gone far. I sailed toward Fireplace, then along Gerard Point, scanning unsuccessfully with binoculars. Had it made it to shore, it would have been somewhere around Accabonac Harbor or maybe the Devon Yacht Club, but it was gone. My suspicion was that a passing boater spotted it near the channel and took it in tow, or perhaps one of the people fishing off the Gerard Drive causeway grabbed it.
Back on land, I emailed every harbormaster in a 20-mile radius plus the Coast Guard. A Coast Guardsman phoned Tuesday to say that a dinghy had been found off Block Island, but it was not mine. I made a bunch of “Reward!” fliers; they’ll go up as soon as I can find my staple gun.