Calibrating compasses

The weather was somewhat unpleasant yesterday: quite a few downpours and wind. This didn't prevent Leo from roaming around the cockpit collecting rain water that was streaming down the bimini. We now have a full bucket of fresh water!

After lunch we ventured into the town, hailing a launch to pick us up. It was still windy, so taking the dinghy to go ashore would have been a wet experience.

The first goal was to find ice cream. The woman who drove the launch boat pointed us to Lewis' ice cream shop, so we heeded her advice to a great delight of Leo and Peter. Kids being kids, they needed to have their faces and hands washed once they were done. In the meantime, I fulfilled the second goal: bought eggs, milk, and some snacks. Provincetown doesn't look like a good place to provision unless one has a car.

We walked around the town a bit and sat down for a coffee at Joe's. We were told that Provincetown has relatively high coronavirus rates, and indeed the town requires wearing masks inside. In contrast, Newport only requires masks for non-vaccinated people. Therefore we went back aboard Salty Ginger after taking a look at the whale watching ship schedules to see when we should start looking out for them on the AIS. Conveniently there is a stand describing whale studies and a map with the frequency of whale sightings, so we are now equipped with all the information we could get to look for whales today.

Back aboard, we decided that conditions allow for calibrating compasses. Something that I noticed on the first sail aboard SG was that the two binnacle compasses sometimes disagreed by 20 degrees. After a bit of fiddling we took the compasses out, found the north-south and east-west adjustment screws, and left the mooring ball to motor around the harbor. Mark and I were quite happy that after 20 minutes the compasses diverge by less than 5 degrees. Finally, a task that I put on the todo list 5 years ago got completed!

After dinner we were treated to a mystical view of the pilgrim memorial partially covered in clouds.