At this time, the year 2014,  I am 65 years young and live on Lopez Island in San Juan county, 12 sea miles West of Anacortes.  I have always had an interest in seamanship, piloting, and navigation. Introduced to sailing small craft at the age of 9, I did a lot of small boat sailing in my youth, joined the sea scouts at 14, went to sea at 18 as a sailor on a Coast and Geodetic Survey ship, and obtained my first master's license at age 20, a Puget Sound license for 100 tons.  During the following 25 years I sailed with several tugboat companies in Alaska and Puget Sound waters, operated a small tugboat company of my own, and commanded tugboats, passenger vessels and cannery tenders.  I also have an interest in marine engineering, and have been an engineer in steam vessels and diesel-powerd vessels.  During the past 40 years I have owned three tugboats, one cannery tender, two sailing yachts, and two steam launches. 

The beginning of my compass adjusting work was when I was a compass adjuster's apprentice with Leonard Shrock at Seattle in 1971.  I knew Leonard from visiting his store on 2nd avenue, the "Max Kuner Co.", founded in 1897, which he had purchased in 1948.  I bought a sextant from him before I shipped out with the Coast Survey and I enjoyed finding antique compasses in the store's basement.  One day he surprised me with the offer of a compass adjuster's apprenticeship and a job at the store. Recognizing an opportunity to learn something new, I accepted.  Leonard was very experienced, even operating a school for compass adjusting for the navy at New York during WWII.  During the 1930s he was a purser and master of steamboats on Lake Washington.  He was also a fine gentleman.  Working with Leonard was fascinating, at first, but I was young and restless and soon found that helping in the store was extremely boring work, and after a year with Leonard I obtained a berth aboard the tug "Fearless", bound for Sitka, Alaska, and was off to new adventures.  Leonard and I exchanged letters occasionally, and I returned to his employ as a compass adjuster some 30 years later.  Leonard passed away at age 93, a few years back.  He had changed the name of  the business  to "Captain's Nautical Supply" during the '70s, and the business is now owned by Leonard's son Emery. I still perform occasional compass adjustments for Captain's.

During the '70s and early '80s I was very busy as a tugboat skipper, and a marine engineer.  I was performing compass adjustments only occasionally with no idea at that time of making a business of compass adjusting.  By the mid 1980s I was being asked more often, and since I  enjoyed the work very much I took out a business license as Sternberg Compass Adjusting.  I haven't been to sea in 15 years now, but I have no desire to retire from compass adjusting.  There are several aspects of the work which I enjoy;  the variety of different types of ships and small craft, the magnetic challenges, the people I meet, opportunities for a bit of practical astronomy if the weather permits, and the satisfactions of traditional seamanship.  Most of my customers are tankers, container ships, tugboats, and oil recovery vessels, with the occasional inspected passenger vessel, fishing vessel, yacht, NOAA ship, or Maritime Administration ship.  I really enjoy adjusting tankers serving the refineries at Cherry Point and Anacortes, usually adjusting them outbound, turning a circle in the open waters of the Strait of Juan de Fuca enroute to Port Angeles.  Returning to Lopez by small plane from PA is a short flight of 25 minutes. I will describe compass adjusting in more detail in another page of this website.

I live on a small farm on Lopez Island with my wife Shannon.  Beef cattle graze here and we keep chickens and cultivate a vegetable garden.  I also have a machine shop, in which I do only do one kind of work: restoration of antique steam engines.  Most of these projects are for a marine steam engine collector in New Orleans.  I have a partner in this work, Stewart Marshall, who is an expert pattern maker, foundryman, and machinist.  A very interesting project ongoing for some time now is the restoration of a US navy steam cutter built in 1909, originally carried aboard the battleship "New Jersey", and which is now in New Orleans.  I do historical research and machine work,  and Stew casts reproduction navy hardware items, exact to original navy drawings from 1900. My hobbies are history, practical astronomy, antique surveying and navigation instruments, clocks and watches, antique telegraph instruments, and steam engineering. I am a member of four historical organizations and two steam power clubs.

Compass adjusting is something more to me than just something I enjoy doing. I believe in the worth of the magnetic compass, and in the value of personal skills and self reliance. The new electronic marvels may eliminate a lot of doubts, compared with the old pre-electronic days, but  GPS is not a seamanlike substitute for a compass, no matter how accurate it may be for position and course made good over ground. It tells you the direction you have been progressing, but that may not be the same as your heading, and it is useless for a heading if you're not moving. Fluxgate compasses often read false information, muddled with auto-compensation features, and they require a power supply. Satellite compasses seem to work well but I hear mixed reports about their reliability. Modern gyro compasses are excellent, but as mechanical devices they can break down.  In the end, the old liquid-filled magnetic compass is still the seaman's most reliable friend.

I prefer to work the North Sound ports;  Friday Harbor, Roche Harbor, Anacortes, Bellingham, LaConner, Oak Harbor, Blaine, Cherry Point,  Port Angeles, Port Townsend, Neah Bay, LaPush.   And of course I am delighted to perform adjustments here at Lopez Island; Shoal Bay, Fisherman Bay or MacKay Harbor or Lopez Sound.  About Seattle, Tacooma, and Olympia,  I work these ports occasionally but not often, generally for old customers; a lot of traveling for me but I enjoy the work so much that I tolerate occasional trips South.