A Refuge for Lost Docks

I came home a little early on Friday afternoon and was mindlessly putzing around the house, when I happened to glance out the window. Then I glanced again. What the what?!?

To my surprise, there was a second dock floating just off shore. Either I'd missed some important memo, or else we'd become a refuge for wayward docks, because whatever that thing that was floating out there was, it sure wasn't ours.

It seems to have been the spring of wayward docks. A couple weeks back, two other docks were drifting through the swatch of open water in our bay. Perhaps the winter was just too long and anchors and ropes started to give way before the docks' owners had time to reattach ("put in") their docks to the shore.  Alternatively (and probably more likely), perhaps the docks were never that secure when they were "put to sea" last fall.

Although I don't remember it as being particularly windy on Friday afternoon, the wind was gusting out of the south and since our dock is located at the northern most point on the lake, it makes sense that a loose dock would end up nestled between our dock ramp, the shore, and the floating portion of our dock.

Now, the question remains: whose is it? When I spotted it on Friday, I decided to tie it up to shore, figuring that it would be easier for whoever lost it to find a stationery object rather than a floating and drifting one. All the docks in the bay are already in, or else have been accounted for, so most likely this dock lives on the other side of the lake. It's probably time to send out an email to the lake association to attempt to find the dock's owner.

Just another North woods mystery . . .