I Lost My Boat On The Way Home

I lost a paddle boat once. Many many years ago.  I had been out at Fortuna Pond with the kids, and I trusted one of the kids (not mine) to hook the straps on the far side. My fault for not checking it. I retraced my route right away and saw somebody driving the other way with it in the back of their truck. The seats and the rudder were still in the back of my truck. By the time I got turned around they were gone. A year later fishing the lower river I found one with a homemade rudder and homemade seats on a dock on the lower river upstream from Bruce Church. The seats for mine and the rudder were on a shelf in my shop, because I had taken them out/off the boat when I loaded it. I didn’t take it though. There was always a chance somebody else had the same boat and lost the seats and the rudder (yeah right). Instead, I printed a note with pictures of the kids paddling around from the day it got lost. I left the note on the boat my next time out, asking them if they picked up my boat and took it home for safe keeping. I don’t recall exactly how they contacted me back, but they were kinda pissy about it saying, “Go ahead and take it, because it wasn’t any good for the current in that area anyway.” LOL. On a third trip out, I finally took back my paddle boat.