One Dark Night in Morro Bay

It was 11pm on a cold, dark Morro Bay night and I was bundled in my bed reading when a knock came at the side of the boat. “Come aboard,” I said, and moments later the boat lurched as Eric the Red hauled his 230 pound frame over the gunnels and onto the deck. As he came down the steps, I saw he had in his hand a brand new bottle of Rumple-Minz peppermint schnapps, a drink which had been an accomplice in many of his stories of wilder, younger years. In short, when Eric drinks Rumple-Minz, crazy things happen. But tonight we were detoxing from a long weekend at the bars, so we each had one, and only one sip. Sailors are naturally a superstitious lot, so it would be a fateful decision.

We talked of girls, sailing and life for an hour or so, then I followed him on deck to see him off. The tidal current was ripping at 3kts, flowing directly from his boat to mine, so he would have to paddle upstream, and paddle hard, if he hoped to make it. His dinghy, which came with his boat, is an inflatable rubber ducky of a boat not more than 6 feet long that rows about as well as a stuck pig in mud. Nevertheless, he decided to give it a go - he could always return to my boat if it wasn't going well. Pushing off the side of Cadence he grabbed the diminutive toy paddles and began splashing at the Morro River in a valiant struggle to get home, while I looked on, just in case. He was half way back to his boat when the port-side oarlock (a cheap plastic pivot point for the oar) abruptly gave way with a "SNAP!". The paddle went swinging in the air, and Eric was thrown off balance and leaned back toward the bow of the dinghy. The dinghy couldn't support the forward shift in weight and began to tip. 'Splash!' His feet went up in the air and the whole dinghy flipped end over end.

“Arrrrgh!” thundered Eric's best pirate roar as his head broke the surface and he shook the sea from his hair like rain from a lion's mane. “Dane!” he hollered, clutching the dinghy as the current grabbed him and hurtled him back toward my boat.
“I got'cha,” I assured him.
Locked in the current, he tore by the mooring Cadence was tied to and grasped at the mooring line with his one free hand.
“Let it go!", I said as I stooped and put my hand out over the side of the boat. Within seconds the current brought our outstretched arms together. Now firmly holding onto Cadence's toe rail, he handed me the tether to his inverted, one-oared dinghy and I quickly lifted it on board.
“It's f-#k'in cold. Do you have a ladder?”
“Yeah, hang in there a sec.” I got a flimsy plastic ladder clipped in place and with my arm under his shoulder he hauled himself aboard and stood, sopping wet and shivering in the cockpit.

“Strip down, I'll get you some dry clothes.” Fortunately, my brother Boz wears larger clothes than I, and they're still on the boat in his absence. Nonetheless, Eric the Red barely squeezed into them. Thawing out under some blankets in his tight new fleece pants and flannel he said pensively,
“Man, I could've been sucked out to sea.”
“That's a fact.”
“You saved my ass.”
“Ah, you'd have grabbed something or swam to shore, you'd just be a hell of a lot colder right now," I assured him.
A long pause...
“My keys were in the dinghy.”
“We'll get a diver to look for them tomorrow.”
“They were on a floating key chain.”