Heading, Course, and Bearing

This post is made with the bias of a small sailboat coastal sailor. Its main purpose is a reference for me. Your nautical milage will vary.

I use a Garmin GPSMAP86 for electronic navigation on my J70 Escape. Getting caught in the fog off the coast of Santa Barbara has taught me that it is essential to have a GPS on board that is not dependent on externalities such as downloading maps as you go. Also, having a unit that allows me to set waypoints from a web page and having satellite communications is a big plus.

As a first-time user, Course and Bearing get confusing, so here are some definitions.

Heading

Heading is the direction that your bow is pointing and sailing towards. It different than course over ground (COG), which takes into consideration such as current and slippage. It is the actual

Bearing

Bearing is the direction to your destination. As a sailor, it is the direction to a course mark or destination. This changes if you are not sailing towards your destination. This is important to me because it gives me a line-of-sight direction to where I want to go.

Course

Course is good, but not too useful as a small boat sailor/racer. It is the direction of a vector or line from one waypoint to another. So, if you round a mark, it gives you the direction to your next mark. It is quite easy to get off course in open water sailing.

At work we were talking about meaningful commits. The only default commit comment was: initial commit. We laught at it because of the comment "It is git's version of Hellow World"

June is Alzheimer's & Brain Awareness Month.

This is probably one of the more soul-crushing diseases for both the patient and their loved ones. It is worth our attention.

My site will go Purple for the rest of June.

Poor Riley. He has to deal with me making cat videos on TicTok with him as the star.

@michaelghens

##catdiaries ##catdiary

♬ Original Sound - Unknown

Third ride of CycleMaynia. Really, besides that, it gave me an excuse to test out Telemetry Overlay with two imputs (GoPro, and Garmin Fenix 6).

So far so good. Telemetry Overlay is actually the software that should be with gopro, only problem, I would dislike it to go to the wayside like DashWare.

I am finally getting used to the idea of cycling weekdays for health. In the morning, cars tend to be a hazard. People are tired and not aware of non-cars out and about.

This is a GoPro video of my ride. Battery went dead before the ride was over. I think I am going to do one more to see what it would be like with cadence and power overlays the next time I rid.

Today is the second Mother's Day without my mother. It pains me to say that she died at the right time. COVID and how our government treated the elderly was, let's leave it as not positive. It would have just crushed me if she had died with the policies in place at the height of the COVID restrictions.

Today, my Mother's Day highlight was to put flowers at the graves and have a talk. I have seven relatives at the Santa Barbara Cemetery.

There were times over the years that I was at my wit's end. How do I stay employed, have a life, and take care of a sick relative so they would not have to be at a nursing home? I did not succeed at times. I am still beating myself up.

I will say this, even at their sickest, there was a comfort that they were still there. I have found out that I am significantly more risk-averse without my mother and grandparents alive.

If anyone would ask me if I miss them, my answer is you betcha.

2021 is going to be the fourth year going on five as a J70 boat owner, captain.

Many of the things that I thought were correct when I bought Escape proved to be wrong. I wanted a more democratic boat with crew ownership of their tasks. I found out that there can only be one captain on a sailboat and that I needed better standards on who may sail with me. A person who wants to sail is not good enough. Sailboat racing is an extreme sport with rules. People get hurt, boats get damage.

There are so many articles about how to sail a boat, not many on managing those who sail with you.

I am an MBA. Over the next few months, I plan on putting my thoughts down on crews and running a J70. I hope to implement them over time.