Mapping Hacks

Create a Distance Grid in Excel #12

Chapter 1, Mapping Your Life

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HACK

Let’s Go Diving

One potential use of this grid might be to enter the waypoints for underwa-

ter diving sites in your area of interest. Chuck Tribolet has a nice page of

GPS resources for diving Monterey Bay, California at http://www.garlic.com/

~triblet/swell/gps.html, including a list of dive locations with latitudes and

longitudes. As a diver, I might find it useful to have distance and bearing

grids on hand for these locations—that way, after a dive, I can quickly con-

sider distance in my decision of where to dive next. Figure 1-26 shows an

example distance grid for this use case. Similarly, Figure 1-27 shows a sam-

ple bearing grid.

While these tables do provide the literal distance and bearing between

points, they don’t consider actual barriers to navigation, such as the absence

of roads or the presence of cliffs. You might think that you could get home

to the Breakwater Ramp in Monterey Harbor from a dive at the south end of

Point Lobos by steering a course of 22 degrees. Unfortunately for you, there

are a number of miles of nonaqueous dirt between these points. Happy div-

ing, and watch out for rocky points!

Figure 1-26. Distance grid of selected Monterey area dive sites

Figure 1-27. Bearings between selected Monterey area dive sites