Had I turned to starboard, rather than to port, after my dinghy, One, disappeared earlier this month, I might have found it right away. But I did not and instead began the search within a few hundred yards of where it must have been drifting at the time.
As I now piece together what happened, the dinghy had worked its way off Cerberus's stern much farther north in the bay than I had assumed. It was then blown, not toward Fireplace, as I had assumed, but onto King's Point.
I would have known none of this had I not been relayed a message from Rudy Ratsep late Tuesday that he had spotted a similar dinghy ashore while taking a boat from Devon to Three Mile Harbor. My friend Rebecca Gordon and I went for a look the following morning.
The sun was in our eyes, making it difficult to tell if it was mine until we got close. But there it was, its name spelled out in block letters on its upturned stern. The oars, oar-locks, and life jacket were still inside.
With the wind hard onshore from the northeast, we figured it would be better to wait to take it off the beach. I moved it higher on the rocks and tied its painter to a tree — a sign, I hoped, that it was not abandoned.
After we secured the boat, Rebecca reminded me that in last week's column, I had lamented contemporary human nature, making the leap from my missing dinghy to the conclusion that no one could be trusted anymore.
After a pause, she said, "except maybe family." Rudy is some kind of cousin on my father's side; there is lovely poetic symmetry in the fact that he was the one who noticed the boat and made the connection.