The "to record an event" meaning of logging does in fact originate from wooden logs, which were used to calculate the speed of a ship under sail. A log, tied to a fathom-line, was cast off the stern, and the number of knots which passed through the sailors hands in a measured time interval determined the speed. This was recorded as "log", in what came to be known as the "ship's log". The term came to be used for event recording in general. This was used as a component of "dead reckoning" (that is, deduced reckoning of position) in navigation, prior to the development of accurate time-keeping and direct position reporting through LORAN, radar-navigation, and ultimately GPS. Dead reckoning was not especially accurate and had some rather notorious failure modes.

<https://www.etymonline.com/word/log> (definition 2)

Chip log: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_log>

Dead reckoning: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_reckoning>

Scilly naval disaster of 1707, in which four warships and 1,400 to 2,000 sailors of the British fleet were lost in a single navigational failure: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scilly_naval_disaster_of_1707>

This directly inspired the Longitude Rewards prizes for developing accurate navigational methods (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_rewards>) and John Harrison's invention of a marine clock (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison#Longitude_proble...>).

More recently, the Honda Point disaster in which the US Navy, 1923 saw the loss of 7 destroyers at flank speed of 20 knots off the Santa Barbara coast: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Point_disaster>.

It's interesting to note that advances in timekeeping typically translate to improvements in location determination.