It is howling. Noisy. The rigging is vibrating. Glad I am not out there…This morning I had to get off my bike and walk bent over against the westerly wind. I went to 11 o’clock mass at the 11th century St.Paul church. The sermon was about the resurrection and the priest looked like the resurrected Father Marquardt we had as our parish priest at St. Patrick’s church in Tacoma when we lived there from 1972 till 1984. The same shape and Franciscan halo hairline. By now you have become accustomed with my analysis of the congregation. I’d give it an average age of 55, lower than in Holland but higher than my earlier Sundays in France, 65% filled. Since Monday all shops will be closed I shopped for a refill of my supplies for an eventual 3 or 4 day passage at Carrefour. I got a little closer to the pink and not so pink Flamingoes in the salt marshes on the way to town.
I spent most of the afternoon trying to read up on how I might connect the AIS inputs to my digital charts on my laptop and/or tablet. The $10 app I bought for the tablet called “Boat Beacon” is great it shows all traffic around me. But there is one problem: I have to be connected to the internet… Navionics on the tablet does not appear to have any way to read the AIS signal, only GPS. On the laptop I have Nobeltec and OpenCPN. Both have provisions for AIS but neither programs let me connect to my Wireless multiplexer. I will be o.k. to use just the VHF radio tio alert me to approaching traffic but the screen on the radio is tiny and complicated to figure out the collision threat. I gave the SailMail systems a couple more tries but it still hangs up on me. It is something very simple. The ring gets through but just does not quite make the handshake. I have a couple writing projects and I started one of them. No chance to get bored while waiting for the right three days of less than gale force winds to get on the road again.
