With every hour, my hope fades of ever being reunited with my still-gone dinghy. This makes me sad, not so much because it was a terrific little boat, but for what it says about people.
To back up: I bought the dinghy inexpensively in May out of a backyard in Connecticut where it had sat for years amid a pile of leaves. The bottom skeg needed patching — most do — and the seat bowed like a hammock. But after a week of on-and-off work, it cleaned up nicely.
I kept the dinghy on a beach at Lake Montauk to go back and forth from my sailboat. It broke loose while being towed off Gardiner’s Island and has been M.I.A. for more than a week. In its place, I’ve used a kayak, which is fine unless I need to carry supplies or a passenger.
I bought a replacement in Rocky Point on Saturday for $65; it, too, needed a skeg repair. Having lost three dinghies already, if this one goes, I, the Johnny Appleseed of small rowboats, will take up golf.
From the start I assumed the lost dinghy could not have gone far. Less than a half-hour had gone by between the time I last saw it and when I noticed it was no longer tied to one of Cerberus’s stern cleats. A passing boater might have taken it in tow, or perhaps it had been blown ashore along Gerard Drive and quickly loaded into a truck.
“Reward” signs and messages to the Coast Guard and regional harbormasters produced nothing, nor did a notice in The Star’s classifieds. This says to me that it was found by someone who intended to keep it. I don’t mind sounding like an old-timer when I say that there was a time when an effort to return a dinghy to its owner would have been all but assured.
Maybe it is still out there, though I doubt it. I just hope it becomes well loved and does not end up again under a heap of leaves.