One Dartmouth boater will be thanking his lucky stars tonight after a minor mishap that nearly left him hypothermic.

A beachgoer at Round Hill called 911 after an empty dinghy with its engine running came ashore on May 25.

According to District No. 1 Fire Chief Peter Andrade, the dinghy’s owner either tripped or slipped and fell off the craft as he and his wife were preparing to disembark from their sailboat. The chief said that the gentleman struggled to get back onto his sailboat for around 30 minutes, while his wife unsuccessfully tried to pull him up.

During this, the smaller boat broke away and ended up at the beach.

After neighbors identified the skiff as belonging to the nearby sailboat, Fire District No. 1 called the Buzzards Bay Task Force and the Coast Guard to help with the rescue.

The man eventually managed to get back onto his boat, although both he and his wife were taken to Padanaram for assessment, as he was in the beginning stages of hypothermia, the chief said.

“Good thing people were walking on the beach and had the good sense to call 911,” he noted, calling the incident “a chilling start to the marine season for us.”