The ship's logearlyMIT

omalogbook

It keeps the watch while you sail: a position every hour, the day's run, and a GPX track for every passage. Write a note and it lands with the time and the spot on the chart. The whole log is a folder of markdown you own — no database, no server, and no need for omalogbook to read it again.

omalogbooka note, a mark, and putting one right

An evening on the sample sail. The note lands at the boat's position; /anchor files a mark with the wind and the barometer beside it; then the note is clicked and put right. The positions and the day are invented.

What it writes

A day at a time, one markdown note each, with the day's run, fastest speed and time under way in the front matter.
A GPX track for every passage — the format every chartplotter and mapping site already reads.
Your notes, where you wrote them. An entry carries the time and the boat's position, from the same GPS the chartplotter draws.
Your writing, left alone. omalogbook owns one block in each note. Your prose, your headings and any front matter you add are copied through untouched, and a total you correct by hand stands.
Committed as it goes, and pushed when there's a connection. Offshore there won't be one for weeks, which is not an error.

The log: ~/Logbook/2026/09/2026-09-19.md
A note: 23:08 · 37°52.0′N 122°18.9′W — Dolphins off the port bow
Under way: above 1.0 kn; still below 0.5 for 5 min
Keys: Enter files, Tab takes a mark, n Night Watch, Esc backs out

It's just markdown

One file a day, in year and month folders, and that is the whole storage layer. Nothing reads it back but a text editor.

~/Logbook/2026/09/2026-09-19.md

---
date: 2026-09-19
boat: Dash
distance_nm: 11.8
max_sog_kn: 6.2
hours_underway: 3.45
tracks: ["tracks/2026-09-19-194806.gpx"]
crew: ← yours, and left alone
---

# 2026-09-19 · Dash

Wind filled in off the Berkeley pier. Reefed in the slot.

<!-- omalogbook:begin -->

## The watch

- 19:52 (02:52 UTC) · 37°51.8′N 122°18.9′W · 268° · 4.4 kn — under way
- 23:14 (06:14 UTC) · 37°52.0′N 122°18.9′W — Dolphins off the port bow

Day's run 11.8 nm · fastest 6.2 kn · under way 3 h 27 min

Track [tracks/2026-09-19-194806.gpx](tracks/2026-09-19-194806.gpx)

<!-- omalogbook:end -->

Obsidian opens it as a vault with nothing to convert. The front matter becomes properties, so a day's run and fastest speed are there to sort and query.
Your own front matter stands. Add tags, crew, anything — omalogbook owns six keys and copies the rest through untouched, every save.
Neovim opens it as files. omalogbook-open starts your editor with the vault as its working directory, so :Telescope live_grep sees the whole log and not one day.
Grep is the search. Every entry is one line that opens with its time, so rg "dolphins" ~/Logbook is the whole query language.
Nothing here is Obsidian-flavoured. No wikilinks, no tags, no plugin syntax — CommonMark and YAML, so any editor that reads markdown reads your log.

Today's note, from anywhere:

$ omalogbook path
~/Logbook/2026/09/2026-09-19.md

Every setting is optional, and the vault can live wherever your notes already do.

Which is all a keybinding needs:

-- Neovim: <leader>ol opens today's log
vim.keymap.set("n", "<leader>ol", function()
  vim.cmd.edit(vim.fn.system("omalogbook path"):gsub("%s+$", ""))
end, { desc = "Today's log" })

Marks

Some moments are worth more than prose. A line that opens with a mark is filed as an event, with the course and speed you were making and what it was blowing at the time.

A mark says what the log can't work out for itself. under way and stopped come from a speed threshold, and a threshold can't tell anchored from moored from tied up alongside. You can.

The weather on a mark is two different things, and the log never blurs them. wind … (HRRR) is omawind's forecast worked out at the boat — a model's opinion, and the only source of a barometer reading. measured … is an anemometer that really measured that wind, at a named NOAA station within 10 nautical miles, with the age of its report. Reading a log back, the difference matters.

Putting an entry right

Click an entry and its words come up in the line for editing. STRIKE rules through it instead, which is what a paper log does: the entry happened and was withdrawn, and that reads back as more honest than a line that was quietly never there. omalogbook strike 3 --erase takes one out altogether, for when that is truly what you mean.

The clock and the fix are never rewritten. A log is a record of where the boat was and when, and omalogbook will not put different numbers there.

How it works

omalogbook writes; omakeel listens. The hub decodes the GPS and keeps the boat's fix; omalogbook follows its socket, works out when a passage starts and ends, and writes the note and the track. The window is a second face on the same thing — it reads the day through omalogbook itself and files by calling it, so a note typed on watch and one typed in a terminal are the same note.

Nothing here needs a database or a server, and nothing needs omalogbook to read the log again.

The tracks are plain GPX in a folder, so anything can read them. omahelm does: it draws the days on the chart, each one joined into the trip it was.

Install

Omarchy on x86_64 or aarch64, with omakeel running on your GPS:

$ cargo install --git https://github.com/shieldsworks/omalogbook --locked
$ omalogbook run

Settings live in ~/.config/omalogbook/config.toml and every one is optional: where the vault is, the boat's name, how often to log a position, and what counts as under way. Make the vault a git repo and omalogbook commits as it writes.

Not yet

It has not kept a log at sea for a season. The recording above is an invented day.
Weather beyond wind and pressure: no air or water temperature, sky, visibility or sea state, until the boat has instruments to read them from.
Routes, which omahelm doesn't have yet. Tracks are recorded now.
Engine hours, fuel and tanks belong to omabosun; an anchor watch will come from omanchor rather than be guessed at from speed.

A log is a record of where you were

Night by night, at what time, for as long as you keep it. Keep your own vault private, and think before you publish a track.

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