<p>Keeping Boaters on Course: Mystic seaman adjusts and repairs compasses
By Elizabeth Yerkes
Published on 12/23/2005</p>
<p>Mystic - While a vacuum chamber hummed in the background, George Winther balanced a compass card with tiny weights measured in grains. At his elbow, lined up neatly on a workbench, rest signed, wood-handled tools. His Danish grandfather, a watchmaker, made them and he uses them almost every day. </p>
<p>No computer monopolizes Winther’s desk, and the only thing that makes him jump up is the telephone. </p>
<p>Summer is hectic sailors will call as they’re coming into a marina and ask me to come aboard. I’ll grab my gyro compass and battery and go, Winther said. </p>
<p>Like one of the magnets inside this basic navigation tool, Winther, 78, was drawn to compasses. </p>
<p>My father was a good pilot and navigator, so I got interested in compasses and how they worked. I have no earthly reason why I did that, he said.</p>
<p>In the workshop, Winther rebuilds and repairs compasses that can be more than a half-century old. Brass parts and optically ground glass domes make finding replacement pieces a challenge, he said.</p>
<p>George B. Winther Yacht Services doesn’t advertise, but is one of only a few remaining full-time compass adjusters on the East Coast. Winther’s workshop and installation service operate in a small space at Gwenmore Marina on Roseleah Drive in Mystic. He is an authorized service provider for the big names in compass manufacturing: Ritchie, Danforth and German maker Kessen & Plath, but Winther has repaired compasses from around the globe. </p>
<p>A few years back I got a pair of compasses from the (America’s) Cup defenders in Sydney. I fixed them up and sent them back within three days, Winther said. </p>
<p>Navy and Coast Guard ships, their tugboat tenders and smaller craft call Winther when in port for repairs and adjustments. He regularly visits cutters in New Haven and Eaton’s Neck, Long Island, fishing boats in Stonington Harbor, and tugboats and ferryboats in New London. </p>
<p>Clients call his work fast, accurate and reasonable.</p>
<p>Maybe I’m too reasonable, joked Winther, who said unless an apprentice has another job, the work isn’t lucrative enough for someone providing for a family. </p>
<p>Winther began messing around with wooden boats and canoes in Wethersfield more than 70 years ago. By hanging around the yacht club, hopping aboard steam engine-driven tugboats and paying close attention, Winther said he learned to pilot, navigate and lay courses by compass. </p>
<p>By 14, Winther said he wound up being the skipper of a 68-foot charter out of Essex. </p>
<p>When World War II began, Winther said he enlisted in the Merchant Marines and later joined a Tidewater Royal tanker out of Bayonne, N.J. There, he rose from able-bodied seaman to bo’sun, and earned his first class pilot license. After the Merchant Marines, Winther co-managed a boat manufacturing company. </p>
<p>But 70-hour weeks for more than 15 years takes a toll on your health, he said. </p>
<p>Going out on his own, Winther flew around the country for marine surveys, repair work and navigation system installation. Now, compass work remains his passion.</p>
<p>A compass is an essential tool on any vessel. The need is the same, although each boat is different: if power fails, the electronic navigation system is inoperable, but a compass and chart can still get you home. </p>
<p>During swab summer aboard the barque Eagle, Coast Guard Academy cadets learn to read both magnetic and gyro compasses as well as how to use a sextant, although the academy doesn’t teach celestial and magnetic compass navigation any more, according to CGA Public Affairs Officer Shaun Eggert. </p>
<p>Winther said many new pleasure boat owners these days don’t bother to install a backup compass, endangering everyone on the water. </p>
<p>Boaters can install GPS, electronic compass, satellite phone, depthfinder, fishfinder, Internet and more on board. However, Winther has seen a backlash against gadgetry among some mariners because they’ve tired of staring at screens. </p>
<p>I’ve retrofitted a lot of boats and removed a lot of digital compasses, he said. People tell me, 'They’re too confusing, take them off.' </p>
<p>In these waters, magnetic variation from true north (the North Star) is approximately 15 degrees west. A magnetic north reading can further deviate from that because of a boat’s setup. </p>
<p>When Winther is called, he goes on board to correct for deviation from magnetic north. He fires up his battery-powered portable gyro compass and tells the skipper to point the boat north according to the ship compass. If the deviation is severe, Winther searches for obvious suspects such as stereo speakers on either side of the compass, batteries, electric motors, audio speakers, even a steering wheel that may have been put in since the compass was installed. </p>
<p>Marking the difference between the two bearings, Winther slides various sizes and strengths of external magnets toward the ship compass to correct it, then affixes them permanently. Sometimes he’ll tell the owner that the expensive stereo speakers have to go. </p>
<p>If they balk, he said, I say I’ve never heard of anybody getting their family home safe guided by stereo speakers.</p>
I thought it was interesting. Just goes to show you, when kids are deciding on a career–bet that man’s counselor (not that he had one) never asked him, “Well, have you considered fixing ship’s compasses?” Seems like all the really interesting jobs just sort of pop up!</p>