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That sounds like a far more interesting thread than questions about paperwork.
Is an electronic logbook acceptable in UK?
- Thread starter DennisF
- Start date
guernseyman
Well-Known Member
AS a previous poster remarked, your insurers may take an interest in your log in the event of an accident. It will help them decide what you will get in the way of a payout.
The log may not be too relevant in the event of a collision with another boat as it may be due to carelessness; on the other hand they would be very interested to know how you managed to hit a charted rock, and your log would be very revealing.
The log may not be too relevant in the event of a collision with another boat as it may be due to carelessness; on the other hand they would be very interested to know how you managed to hit a charted rock, and your log would be very revealing.
JumbleDuck
Well-Known Member
Is there any record of that every happening to anyone? Still, it's a neat conflation of "A logbook is a legal document" and "<insert here> may invalidate your insurance" which are the two most frequently repeated piece of hokum on these forums.
macd
Well-Known Member
Agreed. Perhaps it might also be considered in the context of the (far more frequent, and often fatal) circumstances of road vehicle accidents and the records demanded thereof. If you wish to keep a log book, do so. Wear a pink tutu, as well, if you wish.
Neeves
Well-Known Member
I thought the same was true of AIS derived movements, but maybe only for commercial vessels.
Jonathan
chrishscorp
Well-Known Member
Daydream believer
Well-Known Member
Sailing single handed I find that I just scribble the notes onto a note pad & write the log up afterwards. That suggests that from comments made that the RYA would not accept that for presentation for YM exam as it has not been written en route &, therefore, may have been subject to edit. Is that correct?
Although on one trip around France my wife & I were having a "domestic" as we entered a difficult rocky river. She was down below "throwing a wobbly" & entering notes directly into the log.
"What buoy is that?"
"I do not know"
"I have to put something , you told me to log all the buoys for the trip outbound"
"Look I don't know. Just put b..dy big green f..ker for all i care"
& now my log has the entry "15-00 -- b..dy big green f..ker 100 yds , stbd"
Still no idea what it was called. Dunno what the RYA would make of that one either!!
Although on one trip around France my wife & I were having a "domestic" as we entered a difficult rocky river. She was down below "throwing a wobbly" & entering notes directly into the log.
"What buoy is that?"
"I do not know"
"I have to put something , you told me to log all the buoys for the trip outbound"
"Look I don't know. Just put b..dy big green f..ker for all i care"
& now my log has the entry "15-00 -- b..dy big green f..ker 100 yds , stbd"
Still no idea what it was called. Dunno what the RYA would make of that one either!!
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Stemar
Well-Known Member
I never bother for pottering around the Solent and nearby. If I'm getting to where a total electrical failure (including tablet & mobile phone) would give a problem finding my way home or to a safe haven, then I make a note of my position, heading, course and speed every hour. So far, that's only meant cross channel.
ShinyShoe
Well-Known Member
Thats what the cloud is for! (Something like dropbox - with the files stored in a local folder automatically mirroring to d-box)
Although that is dependant on you having internet access. If you were really worried and internet not great (west coast?) then you could use a little script to copy the files to a thumb drive every 30minutes. Unmount it after each copy completed. Risks of a crash taking it out would be low. Harder if you really were worried about proving the data wasn't retrospectively edited... someone will be along shortly with a blockchain solution!
Nice little email option - as an alternative means to "backup"Good option is the opencpn logbook plugin - autoinsert various data if hooked up and has crew/maintenance tab. Handy for printing crew lists & boat details should you ever get the places where they like that sort of stuff. Once in while I'll update the paper log with one line entries otherwise it' electronic all the way
https://opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwiki/d...ser_manual:plugins:log_data_translate:logbook
Do you take a printer with you? Or send them a file for them to print?
It certainly does... Perhaps he should start by submitting his logbook for the forum jury to review and consider... ;-)
Does that mean we shouldn't log? Or should log? "Don't write anything down - it might get used against you versus document everything - it will help you prove you are in the right later on..
If the perceived "Wisdom" of making hourly log entries is applied the log entry at 15:00 noting a big green buoy alongside doesn't really explain how you hit the big rocky thing 45minutes later.
ASUSAY
New Member
A book made from a log !!!!!!!!
dunedin
Well-Known Member
Not sure that a leisure boat log would have any relevance in terms of an impact with a charted rock.
We must have passed many thousand charted rocks last year (Scotland West Coast, Norway, Sweden) and perhaps a handful, less than twenty, would be mentioned in the log - only when they marked a major headland/turning point.
And when rocks every 50-100m you don’t record the course to steer between each hard object in the log. Too busy following the pilotage to scribble stuff down.
AIS track might be used, but log entries I very much doubt.
I do keep a paper log - but mainly for personal interest / momento. On busy passages written up many days later. Use a spiral bound notebook on passage - with scribbles of things relevant to passage (tide times, key waypoints, key timings at major milestones), eagles or dolphin sightings etc. No columns for flexibility. Position, course and speed only recorded hourly if on a long boring bit, never during island pilotage.
[70521]
Well-Known Member
As you say Internet access is an issue 10 miles offshore. As I've spent all of my working life with truly impressive computers, I really don't want to even think about one onboard.
In the next few years I'm retiring and am gearing the boat up for ocean crossings I want as little reliance on IT as I can get away with. The official log, coffee stains and truly awful writing will be supplemented by an online journal (blog) so that when I am going senile I can re-live the my sunset years.
GHA
Well-Known Member
Long time since I've needed a crew list , plus solo they tend to be quite short
But some countries require them. Have a printer onboard now, boat details are handy for some checkins - printed then laminated down the local copy shop. Sometimes an office likes kit details as well, so having all that easily printed off with serial numbers in one place is handy once in a blue moon. For backing up the raspberry pi wich runs everything has a little node red button programmed which backs up everything useful, which gets copied over to dropbox/google once in a while. Will automate that some day so it does it when there's wifi.
The logbook is handy, once set up it wil record pressure, sog.cog, position very hour or however you set it.
lpdsn
Well-Known Member
The logbook the RYA are looking for in a YM exam completely different from the logbooks under discussion. Basically a record of voyages. I keep that electronically nowadays although I had paper RYA logbooks when I sat the CS & YM exams.
If you ever wanted to sit the YM exam I'm pretty sure the examiner would take your notes and work with them. I pretty sure they take logbooks with a pinch of salt anyway. There was a significantly different approach with the two examiners I had and the one for the YM Offshore grilled me for over an hour on the logbook but the examiner for CS didn't even open them for any candidate.
I'm sure anyway given all your single-handing they'd push you most on the crew management side.
lpdsn
Well-Known Member
I guess they might wonder what you were doing down below writing up an immaculate log with DR position and course to steer in pilotage waters.
Poignard
Well-Known Member
I find the amount of information in my log is inversely proportional to the complexities of the navigation!
Rock-dodging in foul weather and little gets written down because I'm too busy dodging the rocks. A long passage in fine clam weather finds me leaning over the chart table recording useless information that no-one will ever read!
Rock-dodging in foul weather and little gets written down because I'm too busy dodging the rocks. A long passage in fine clam weather finds me leaning over the chart table recording useless information that no-one will ever read!
Boathook
Well-Known Member
I find the amount of information in my log is inversely proportional to the complexities of the navigation!
Rock-dodging in foul weather and little gets written down because I'm too busy dodging the rocks. A long passage in fine clam weather finds me leaning over the chart table recording useless information that no-one will ever read!
My logbook seems to go the same way as well.
Boathook
Well-Known Member
It's a book about logs and it also has branches forking off .............
colind3782
Well-Known Member
Mine is more of a maintenance log, recording when oil and filters are changed etc. I also record the engine hours as the tacho doesn't work.
prv
Well-Known Member
Indeed, that’s the only logbook on Ariam, a dedicated engine logbook with a spares inventory section in the back. We don’t haul out for the winter any more and I tend to do the various servicing jobs as and when, so without a record it would be easy to do things twice a couple of months apart, or think I’ve changed the oil when I’m actually remembering doing it last year. No need to record hours run as the engine does that, but we record oil and fuel fills to monitor consumption (there’s a known minor oil leak that will need an engine-out job we haven’t got round to yet).
For navigation, outside of Solent pottering I plot positions on the chart at least hourly, using the Yeoman. For something like a Channel crossing or Lyme Bay or heading to Guernsey, I add the log reading, course being steered, and average speed next to each plot, which would enable me to pick up DR in the highly unlikely event of all GPS and GLONASS signals failing or being jammed. At the end of the passage I clean the chart with a soft rubber, removing all the plots ready for the next one.
I don’t see any more need than that to log my movements in the boat, any more than I log my use of the car, my shopping habits, or how much TV I watch. I can appreciate that some people derive satisfaction from a well-kept log and that’s fine, but it’s not a necessity for the vast majority of modern leisure sailing.
Pete