Some years back, my wife and I rented a tiny little cottage in Gay Head on Martha’s Vineyard. It was called the Binnacle. According to a story we heard, the Binnacle had been built with a keel for a foundation and a hurricane had floated it to where it was now, on the road from Lobsterville toward Red Beach.

Instead of moving it back to its original site, the Binnacle’s owner, Dorothy Scoville, had simply bought the lot where it had landed.