Two weekends ago, the notorious Blue Beard, my 13-foot long vintage Edgartown beachboat, got a safe mooring in the nick of time in Tisbury Great Pond, thanks to the kindness of a near-stranger.

And my fairly notorious 1996 Toyota Camry that had suffered a flat tire between Edgartown and Vineyard Haven was able to take to the road again, thanks to the efforts of a total stranger.

Such scenarios are the better part of a Martha’s Vineyard summer.

For more than a decade now, Blue Beard has bobbed in summer in Deep Bottom Cove. It would seem that launching so small a vessel (if she can be called that) would be a relatively simple procedure. But it never is. Invariably, there is more than one launching attempt. Invariably, from six to 10 hardy souls — once young but now largely septuagenarian or octogenarian — are called upon to help. When, in the nature of their years, they find dragging Blue Beard into the water on rollers or launching her from her trailer down a precipitous sandy incline too much to handle, the assistance of younger people is sought. After all, it would be inconceivable if a summer went by without one sail, at least, down the pond to the ocean beach, aboard the venerable Blue Beard.

Many volunteers have pitched in to assist in launching her over the years, with Mike and Mary Jane Pease of Chilmark at the forefront. And Mal Jones, who keeps an eye on Blue Beard from across the pond through his binoculars, kindly gives advisories on time and tide and wind and weather for both launching and hauling.

This year, West Tisbury selectman Richard Knabel tentatively offered his truck to help out with the launching, but he paled when he saw the sand and the incline over which his vehicle would have had to maneuver. So in the end it was Peter Meras of East Chop, young and sprightly, who rolled Blue Beard into the water on logs. But Blue Beard bobbed her way too close to shore; Tisbury Great Pond was to be opened to the ocean on the next Monday so its fresh water could flow out and saltwater flow in for the benefit of pond oysters, and this meant the pond level would be lowered. With physics not my strong point, I don’t really understand it. But when the pond is closed, I am told, the rainwater, stream and river water that accumulates inside makes the water level about 44 inches higher than the level of the ocean outside. The way things stood, Blue Beard, where she was, would have been beached all summer once the pond water had flowed out.

Thankfully help arrived in the form of Joe Keenan of Chilmark — ballad writer and guitarist, sea cook, shepherd (sheep baa plaintively on his cell phone answering machine), cowherd, gardener and memoir writer.

We are only vaguely acquainted. We sometimes have chance encounters on Middle Road, where he lives and I walk. He is, however, generally acclaimed in Island circles as a good and helpful person, so I boldly ferreted him out from his room above the barn at Mermaid Farm on Sunday. Since he is a maritime as well as a farming sort and had told me, in our roadway conversations, of his adventures sailing the seven seas — I asked if he had a moment for a marine rescue. And he did.

Surrendering his cook-out duties at Everett Healy’s eighth birthday party to his brother, Philip, chief cook on the Shenandoah, valiant Joe came to Blue Beard’s rescue. It didn’t matter that he had no time to change from blue jeans to swimming shorts before he made his way into the Great Pond. His blue jeans needed washing anyway, he said, as he waded into the murky water at dusk (last chance in view of the 8 a.m. Monday scheduled pond opening). He was assisted by old nautical hand Ike Russell, who has participated in myriad Blue Beard launchings and haulings. The task was to get Blue Beard out into six-foot deep water. With little more than a twist of his wrist, Joe dragged Blue Beard’s mushroom anchor and her cement block mooring away from their near-shore mucky bottom locations to farther out mucky bottom locations, and at last as the sun sank in the west, all was well.

His yeoman’s effort reminded me of the apocryphal story of my great-grandfather who, en route to America from Germany in the 1880s, was called upon in a storm to go overboard and wrench the anchor that had blown into the side of vessel out of her, in the process saving the ship from sinking and becoming a hero. The story has never made sense to me, however, since I would have thought once the anchor was removed from the side of the ship, there would have been a hole through which water would have gushed into the hold. But apparently that didn’t happen or I would not be on Martha’s Vineyard now thanking Joe Keenan for saving the day and rescuing Blue Beard. A summer sail or two aboard her before fall is surely a happy prospect.

My maritime summer adventure was on Sunday. The day before, I had had my land adventure of the season. After leaving the Cobbler Shop on the Edgartown-Vineyard Haven Road, I had been lured across the way to the Norton Farm to buy fresh strawberries. Strawberries bought, and several happily consumed, I started out again onto the roadway. But my dark blue 1991 Toyota with its signature red stripe around the middle (as opposed to my polka-dotted blue Chevrolet Corsica of 1988) appeared to be limping. The left rear tire was flat. I am not only a nincompoop about matters of tide, but equally inept at mechanical matters. I do belong to triple AAA, but when I tried to call them, I found my infrequently-used, infrequently-charged cell phone was dead. As I pondered what to do next, a shiny golden 1968 Volkswagen Beetle pulled up behind me, and Steve Vancour of Edgartown hopped out. His vintage Beetle, it turned out, was on its way to the Tisbury Volunteer Fire Department’s specialty car show at Boch Park. He was already late to the event, but seeing a lady and a car in distress automatically moved him to assist.

In a trice, while his wife, Mary, and the Beetle (Lorraine) patiently waited, he opened the Toyota’s trunk, removed the spare, jumped up and down on the lugs to remove the flat, replaced it with the spare, and good deed done — sped away to the car event to show off his Beetle, rescued from a dump in the woods and lovingly restored.

So now I can move about happily again on both sea and land, thanks to a Vineyard near-stranger and a total stranger. The heat notwithstanding, summer is looking up.