Daniel Bigelow

C# Ternaries

A ternary operator is a conditional statement. It's easiest to think of it as an alternate if else statement. The syntax is fairly easy, and it can be a useful tool in certain cases. It can be used to make short compact code when doing operations.  They allow you to

Boat Projects

Rebuilding a Lewmar 6 winch

Lewmar 6 winch maintenance step by step.

Boat Projects

2023 Planned upgrades/work

With our plans to put the boat into the marina in late summer 2023 I have started working on the boat a little at a time to get ready.

2023 Marina outlook

The winter season of 2022-2023 brought a level of snowfall that was unprecedented, exceeding previous records by a significant margin. For sailors who traverse the Great Salt Lake, this news was received with great excitement and anticipation. In contrast to the previous year, which had seen the lake hit its

Programming

Equivalence vs. Equality in Java String

Strings are one of the basic data types used in any programming language. Whether displaying text to a user or gathering input, strings will likely be part of that program.

Java wrapText in graphics2D

Currently, I am going through a 2D game design tutorial by RyiSnow on Youtube. The tutorial is good though, at times I throw in my own changes, and will likely rewrite everything at the end to adjust how it is organized. One of the changes I implemented is a word wrap static function.

Sailing

A Nearly Ruined Sail Day

June 19th 2021 We needed to head to the boat to clean it up for pulling it out of the marina the next day, so we decided why not do it during a sail. We got to the boat early and began to clear off the spiders. In only two

Sailing

The Kids Finally Enjoy Sailing

June 5th 2021 My kids have been sailing with us a hand full of times. They have tolerated it, but never truly enjoyed it. The trip a week earlier I could tell the started to finally come around. Today everything changed with them, they finally were excited to go and

Sailing

A Birthday Sail

May 31st 2021 Today was my youngest 3rd birthday, we had his party yesterday. The weather was great today so we decided to take the kids out for a sail to Eardley Spit.  It was an easy sail, and the kids finally had a great time this trip. We swam

Key Lime Sailing Trip 2021

Key Lime Sailing Club and Cottages (Day 6)

Day 6 (April 27th 2020): Sadly we had to pack our bags and head home. We loaded the car, took one last time to say bye the the guests handing around the tiki hut and headed down the keys. Our flight wasn't until later in the afternoon, so we had

Key Lime Sailing Trip 2021

Key Lime Sailing Club and Cottages (Day 5)

Day 5 (April 26th 2020): We got up early today, ate a quick breakfast and headed out. The cottages have a bunch of kayaks that you can take out on a first come first serve basis. Being larger people we wanted to test a few out to see what worked

Key Lime Sailing Club and Cottages (Day 4)

Day 4 (April 25th 2020): Today was supposed to be the first day of really good sailing. As soon as we woke up we got ready to set sail, packed our lunches, and loaded up our gear. The plan for the day was to head out to an island in

Key Lime Sailing Club and Cottages (Day 3)

Day 2 (April 24rd 2020): Weather was once again at the top end of windy that I wanted to sail in. We did see some boats go out, but they generally had much more experience then we do. The resort does not allow boats out if there are small craft

Programming

C# Hello World in detail

A more detailed look at a beginning c# Hello World application.

Key Lime Sailing Trip 2021

Key Lime Sailing Club and Cottages (Day 2)

Day 2 (April 23rd 2020): We were not really comfortable with the winds today. We would have been fine, but at 17 mph it would be higher winds than I have ever sailed in. Really we were prepared for this though. Just to the north of Key Largo are two

Key Lime Sailing Trip 2021

Key Lime Sailing Club and Cottages (Day 0 & 1)

The day we scheduled out Covid-19 vaccines we decided we needed a vacation once we were fully vaccinated. Nikki asked me were and it didn't take me long to think of Key Lime Sailing Club and Cottages . The resort had been suggested on the Catalina 22 forums several times in

Sailing

Marina Update #1

In a previous post Marina Troubles I discussed the shrinking Great Salt Lake and the fact that all of the boats need to be pulled from the lake. More and more emails have been going out about pulling boats as the spring is looking worse and worse for lake levels

Sailing

First Spring Sail 2021 (mildly NSFW)

With our marina's days being numbered we decided to head out for our first sail of spring. I have time off I need to burn, so we decided to head out sailing on Friday April 2nd. This was the first time we had been out since the weather turned warmer.

Sailing

Marina Troubles

We sail on the Great Salt Lake in Utah. Which is an amazing place to sail, and we really love most aspects of it. Except for the spiders and flies really, everything else is great. There could be more places to go, as there is one usable marina on the

Sailing

First Winter Sail Nov. 27th 2020

We have our boat in a very unique lake. With a 30% Salinity, the water rarely freezes, allowing us to sail year around. The day after Thanksgiving we were able to do just that. We got to the marina about 1230 and left the slip about 1. By 1:30

How long is too long to go sailing?

One day, just before Warren was born (2 years now), we decided that we needed a plan to sail around the world. Traveling is something we both love, and sailing, though new to both of us, was something we both loved. (In fact, at that point we owned a sailboat,

Boat Projects

Ladder Down Slowly!

One of the first project after we first took the boat out was to replace the ladder with something a little more useful. It has been one of the most used things on the boat.  Odin came with a three step collapsible ladder. The top of the ladder connected into

Products

Tooting My Own Horn

Seasense Ecoblast

Boat Projects

Keel Cable Failure Probably Cause and Solution (Keel Cable System and Repair)

<– Lifting the keel while in the water   After retrieving both ends of the keel cable, we were able to look at them and try to determine what caused the cable to fail. Some ideas came from details when I ordered the new cable. After looking at the two pieces, I

Boat Projects

Raising our Keel and Repairing the Cable (Keel Cable System and Repair)

<–Methods of lifting the keel with boat in the water  After our keel cable broke while in the marina, we ordered a new one and waited a month for it to finally arrive. We still didn't know how it broke, but we knew we needed to replace it. The entire