Your vessel’s log

magicol

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With the weather discouraging maintenance work and the attraction of Scrabble and Monopoly waning, thoughts are turning to the season ahead.
My wife gives me a beautifully presented log book at this time of year. It is one of those with printed sections for regular and frequent details of weather, sea state, position and much more. And each year I begin with high ideals and a determination to maintain a better log. By June, my entries have reverted to cursory scribbled notes taking little account of the detailed sections on each page.
We are essentially coastal sailors, occasionally overnight but rarely far offshore. I’m really interested to hear how others keep their vessel’s log.
 

SaltyC

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If day sailing around the bay I will just enter Tides, weather, log reading before departure and an entry of 'under pilotage'.
I usually put an entry of sail plan and engine off.
I then finish with moored and final log reading and engine hours.
On passage elsewhere, will have same entries before departure, then sail configuration and course,DTW, plus lat and long every hour. There will also be comments and any weather updates.
Upon arrival as previous plus max speed, average speed and max wind. Plus a short summary of the day.
Good to look back on over winter plus it keeps the Single Hander amused and focused, stopping the mind wandering and losing concentration / focus.
 

Sandy

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After much disappointment with commercially produced log books, particularly the tiny boxes that they give you to write things in. I sat down and designed a bespoke logbook, had it printed and was surprised at how cheap it was.

For each 24 hour period, I have a page for recording data: position; boat speed; wind speed; VMG; wind speed and direction (T and A) ; sail plan; engine on/off and state of the batteries. The second page is for narrative.

I am always happy to produce bespoke log books of a small sum of beer tokens. Radar plots and Universal Plotting Sheets are also available.
 

Boathook

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I designed my own logbook and a day is on 2 sides of A4 paper. It prints double sided and is in a lose leaf folder.

I fill it out for each trip but the info can be basic to detailed depending mainly on my mood .... Have columns for log and GPS distance. If the tides are done correctly it is interesting how much the log is less than the GPS.
 

RupertW

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We still use them especially for fuel consumption figures as our gauge has been fixed then dodgy perpetually, but do find the descriptive parts get gradually fewer as a cruise goes on. It’s still nice to look back on as we have done very few repeat journeys in the last decade or so.
 

rotrax

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With the weather discouraging maintenance work and the attraction of Scrabble and Monopoly waning, thoughts are turning to the season ahead.
My wife gives me a beautifully presented log book at this time of year. It is one of those with printed sections for regular and frequent details of weather, sea state, position and much more. And each year I begin with high ideals and a determination to maintain a better log. By June, my entries have reverted to cursory scribbled notes taking little account of the detailed sections on each page.
We are essentially coastal sailors, occasionally overnight but rarely far offshore. I’m really interested to hear how others keep their vessel’s log.
Our sailing has been the same as yours - Coastal.

And lets be honest, on this side of the Channel, apart from known hazards and races, you just keep the land on the right going west, and vice versa.

We are simple souls. First Mate has produced loose sheets which will suffice for a 48 hour passage. We enter all relevant info at the top and have enough lines for hourly entering of position, course steered, speed etc. and the sail we have up. Seems to work. We have them in a box in the loft going back to 2002.
 

doug748

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Years ago I sailed with a bloke who used a refillable, hard logbook, I took the hint so these are the answer for me:

1735291348930.png

The refills:

1735291391859.png

They are lined one side and the facing page is blank. The are no defined sections so you can use as little or as much space as you like. I put very basic stuff on the lined section (day date distance travelled weather) and any bits and bobs on the blank page - boats I see, sketches forecast, tide, visitors names, cost of mooring - all very rough and ready.

A log means you can easily find the name or that bloke you sailed with 20 years ago, what races you should have won in 1998 and ( for younger viewers) you have a concrete resource to work from should some future government want to start meddling with leisure sailing qualifications.

.
 

Never Grumble

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Although most of our sailing is coastal/day sails, I use a hard copy mass produced log, admittedly a custom one would be better. The space at the bottom of the pages gets used to stick in some photos and write a bit of a narrative about what happened on the day, the way I sail something of note always happens.

Edit: it seems a nice record to have of when various persons have been out sailing with us.
 
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Supertramp

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I use a proper logbook with concise weather and passage facts plus any entertainment encountered. I log engine hours and temperature, miles covered (per trip and season) and barometric pressure which are all useful and used. I have just started to add crew present. I always fill it, even on a local day sail. Force of habit.

It is a pleasure to review the entries years on. I probably wouldn't bother if I hadn't grown up with logbooks.
 

bergie

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We keep an electronic logbook using Signal K. Some entries like departures, arrivals, etc are automated, and crew can add other entries using their personal mobile devices. Here's a quick snapshot from this week's passage from Canaries to Cape Verde:
1000017496.png
The logbook app also provides a more traditional tabular view for large screen devices.

For backup purposes, especially if we'd have a total electrics failure and had to revert to dead reckoning and celestial, we also get the log entries printed out by a receipt printer:
Screenshot_20241227_181844_Photos.png
The logs for this 900NM passage ended up being quite a scroll!
Screenshot_20241227_181930_Photos.png
Whenever the boat is online, it makes an hourly backup of the logbook data also on GitHub. On passage this happens once per day when we turn on Starlink to get weather etc.
We use this same data then for analysis like autopilot runtime, watermaker statistics etc.
 

westhinder

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Like many on here, I have produced my own loose leaf logbook, with position, log, course, wind, speed and engine data on one side, the narrative and any remarkable sightings on the facing page.
Entries can be very limited when just out for a day and will be more extensive with hourly records when on passage. As we have been voyaging for three months in the last couple of summers, the narrative comes in handy when I afterwards make a photo album of the trip.
I used to record my travels on my blog, but as I started giving regular updates on Instagram, I have discontinued the site. Recently I have discovered Polarsteps and I may well use that next season.
 

ylop

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Like @Sandy I produced a template which I had professionally published and bound. I have a log book version and a passage plan version. They include checklists etc specific to my boat/routine.

My rigour at completing either depends on where I am going, but there is at least the most basic detail of who was on board, where we started from and finished up etc, and almost always my tank levels, battery voltages etc too.

For backup purposes, especially if we'd have a total electrics failure and had to revert to dead reckoning and celestial, we also get the log entries printed out by a receipt printer:
I have considered this because if it is lumpy the last thing I want to do is go below to complete a log just because I should, so having it print out would be sensible. I do have a pi with signal k aboard. Engine instruments aren’t connected to it though - which for hrs, speed/rpm would perhaps be most interesting, and I’ve no temp gauge but that would certainly make an interesting output.

Having it print every hour makes sense but you could be off course for just a moment - does it average at all? or are you just outputting Lat/lon and not speed and direction? I had wondered if it might make sense to record when there seemed to be a significant change of course (30 deg?) rather than just at set periods.

there’s little self adhesive label printers now - and I had thought they would let me stick in the main log, but I’ve not checked longevity of the print or the realistic print costs… bound to be a lot more expensive than a receipt roll.
 

bergie

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I have considered this because if it is lumpy the last thing I want to do is go below to complete a log just because I should, so having it print out would be sensible. I do have a pi with signal k aboard. Engine instruments aren’t connected to it though - which for hrs, speed/rpm would perhaps be most interesting, and I’ve no temp gauge but that would certainly make an interesting output.

If you already have Signal K, it is easy to test the electronic logbook app - just install it from the Signal K "App Store". Install also the "signalk-autostate" plugin, and you'll at minimum get log entries for trip start/end and an hourly entry while underway without having to do a thing. You can then make additional entries or amend these with observations as you see fit.
Users of the Signal K sails configuration app also get sail changes logged in.

Logbook app does keep track of engine hours if available on Signal K. For engine instrumentation, the cheapest (and easiest?) option would likely be to get a HALMET board.

Having it print every hour makes sense but you could be off course for just a moment - does it average at all? or are you just outputting Lat/lon and not speed and direction? I had wondered if it might make sense to record when there seemed to be a significant change of course (30 deg?) rather than just at set periods.
No averaging, thought that's a very good idea. I've wanted to do automatic entries on course changes anyway.
We output course, speed, position, barometer, wind speed, etc if available.

Note that the printing capability is a separate script from the main logbook app. It should be easy to modify to work with different kinds of printers as needed. The label printer idea is interesting if you still want to maintain things also in a paper logbook. We went full digital, so for us the receipt scrolls are just an en-route backup.

In addition to this digital logbook, we also write a daily (b)log entry when we're cruising. These get automatically amended with the logbook entries and track of the day by the system.
 

dansaskip

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I use an A4 spiral bound note book (spiral bound as opens flat and they are a lot cheaper than pre-printed log books in which I drawn columns for:
time, course, log, run, weather, lat, long, remarks - spread over 2 pages
It doesn't take long to rule in the columns and they can be the size I require
The amount of detail I fill in will vary but even for a local jaunt that I have done may times I put in the basics. Oh yes an a paper log doesn't require electic
 

Greg2

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Years ago I sailed with a bloke who used a refillable, hard logbook, I took the hint so these are the answer for me:

View attachment 187130

The refills:

View attachment 187131
.

Having served a dog watch in the RN and operating coded vessels at work I have always kept a log book on our family boats and have found these to be ideal for the reasons stated by Doug. Being coastal and cross N. Sea motor-boaters our trips are measured in hours as opposed to days and we record what is required to meet passage planning obligations (forecast, rides and reference to how we will navigate) as well as half hourly positions, COG, SOG and engine RPM (the latter enabling comparisons of speed and RPM over time as opposed to being necessary for the passage). We also record engine hours and log (mileage) readings so we can see what we have done over a season.

At work we couldn’t find anything that met our needs so like Sandy we designed our own and have them printed.
.
 
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