“Hey!”  Said the man hovering over my left shoulder. I looked up from my squat. I was securing the bow-line of our, never-yet-named-and-fairly-weathered, 11-foot Boston Whaler to a dock cleat at Ivar’s Salmon House on Lake Union.

“Hi,” I said.

“You took our place,” he said, accusingly.

“Sorry?” I asked.

By now both Dave and I (he, securing the stern and keeping quite blind dog, Skoshi, from incapably leaping from dingy to dock) paid attention to the generously sized form hulking above me.

“We were standing off, waiting for this space to open and you swooped in,” he said. In fact, he, leather deck-shoes shod, wearing white cotton trousers nautically rolled at his ankles, shirtless but not hairless, was holding the bow-line of his spiffy 18-foot-or-so powerboat, planning, apparently, to secure it once he finished with us.

“We’ve been standing off for about half an hour. Waiting,” he said. Emphasis on time.

“Wow,” said I, noticing that he was handily on the dock; bow to bow to us. I happily declared the good news that despite our blunder, both boats were present. That seemed not to matter. Maybe unlike me, he was not sweating, not hating the day’s heat. Surely, hopefully, he meant to go order some fish n’ chips or chowder or salad or something.

“You just swooped in!” He wasn’t done.

“I guess we did, didn’t we,” I said. “Sorry,” said I. “We didn’t notice you waiting. We just saw the space, and . . . (observing) . . . fortunately, there was room enough for both of us. And, believe me, had we noticed, and there hadn’t been room enough, and you hailed us, informing us of your wait, we would have moved in a minute. We simply didn’t see you. Out there. Standing off.”

“Right. Well,” said he, perhaps satisfied with a seemingly proper amount of chastising. He moved to the business of securing his boat.

It’s a part of cruising. Some exchanges are pleasing, some few, pugilistic. Occasionally, we come to the aid of fellow boaters; we sometimes, unintentionally, may tick one off.  On that horribly hot, complain-able Tuesday, sweat sticky, sun scorching, we Pines flung our dingy off the flybridge, donned hats, PFD’ed ourselves and dog, got the propane engine purring and pressed a short lake distance to Ivar’s and rejoiced, as two small sailing catamarans left Ivar’s dock, providing room for us to, well, to swoop right in.”