A second slow day. Rick was up for a significant part of the night, thinking and worrying about the GPS. In the morning we downloaded the app, Navionics, that our boat neighbors spoke about, onto our ipad. Rick spent some time learning the software and we headed out. We rounded Fort Adams Point and were headed out the channel, however, the software did not show that we were moving. It turns out that the software can’t use wifi to triangulate position, rather it needs cell service to triangulate off of cell towers. Problem . . . our iPad does not a cellular plan. So we decided to return to the mooring and go to Verizon to put the iPad on our cellular plan. We easily picked up the mooring (not always the case) and got resituated.
We dinghied back to the dock and the car. We drove to Verizon where we learned that our iPad could not accept a cellular signal, so we ended up buying a new tablet. Luckily the Verizon sales person was a sailor and familiar with the software that we want to load on the tablet. We think we are back in business. This GPS has been an expensive problem both in terms of time and money.
After our Verizon visit we wanted to go out to lunch. We tried an old favorite restaurant at the Goat Island Marina but wasn’t serving food, something about a lease and a cook, so we went to another place recommended by the Goat Island Marina bartender and had some lunch.
We returned to the boat in time for Kathryn’s family call.
That evening we cooked the chicken that we had brought because we don’t have a freezer and figured we either needed to cook it or throw it out. Neither of us wanted chicken so we will probably turn it into chicken salad. Instead we had our lunch leftovers. While the chicken was cooking we spent a little more time learning Navionics. Our tentative plan for tomorrow is to go to Block Island however there may be a couple of issues. The first is that there was a big fire there on Friday night a state of emergency was issued, so we have left a message for the harbormaster to see if boats are welcome. The second potential issue is that fog is forecasted for tomorrow morning and we can’t move safely in fog so fingers crossed!