The Campac is a very nice little shoal draft boat, too, Amos. 600lb cement keel for balast, draws 18'. Lots of room in the cuddy cabin for a couple of folks used to squeezing 7-10 days worth of gear and supplies into a kayak. An accomplished sailor, and neither of us were, could sail to the Bahamas in it if they picked their weather pretty carefully. While I admit we burned up the car doing it, we towed it from the Piedmont of North Carolina, to the Eastern Shore, of Maryland, to numerous points on the North Carolina coast, to TVA lakes in the North Carolina mountains with my little 1987 Ford Escort.

Stilly, your tale brings back a memory. My boyfriend in high school kept parakeets.   One unseasonably cool and blustery summer day we were down on the pier at the lake. Truly unseasonable weather. There was sudden flutter, and an immature white parakeet, obviously an escapee since they have not naturalized at all in WV (too cold), landed on his shoulder. He gathered it into his hands and we found a box in his car in which to put it. No one responded to the posters he put up around the lake to claim it, so he kept it and taught it to talk.

I forget it's name, but he would get it to talk into the phone to me.

Sweet white bird.