I made a simple form in an excel spreadsheet with two lines per entry.

Line 1 = Date, time, speed, speed over ground, heading, course over ground, wind, depth, lat/long, sea height, barometer, gen weather description (ie rain, clear skies, etc)

Line 2 = crew, comments (which I use for general from/to identification)

For a day sail, I may skip most and only record the date, the crew and the destination.

For a passage, I may record all info every hour or when there is a significant change, like it started raining or a shift changed.

I can get 10 entries on a landscape piece of 8/11 paper. I hole punch a dozen pages and put them in a tab in a 1" notebook. The same notebook has sections to record repair, needed supplies, upgrades I've thought of, maintenance tasks and dates and has my winterization checklist.

All could easily be on a screen too, but the simplicity of the soft covered, 1" notebook works best for me. I even printed a stock photo of the side view of our hull and slipped it into the cover with the name of our vessel. Actually, I just realized, its the same photo I used in my sig below.

 

To be completely legal a decklog must be bound with the pages numbered and entries completed in ink.

Here is one developed by me and another from a friend.

http://www.swiftsuresailing.com/documents/decklog.pdf

http://www.swiftsuresailing.com/documents/Nautical Log Sheet.pdf

 

Whatever you use, be sure to keep it simple and concise. Some folks have a tendency to add superfluous lines and data requirements that add nothing to the log but take extra time to enter, thereby decreasing the likelihood that it will be entered after the first three lines. Like food at a picnic, take all you need but eat all you take.

 

Well, first off, it should be left-justified.

 

Mine's quite similar to Minnie's but add engine hours if engine run. Also from old celestial days at noon figure days run. finally at noon write in amount of fuel/water left. Ask crew to write in any contacts ( visual or by radio/electronics etc. ) when passagemaking as last line. Some keep separate radio log which I guess you really should do. Now with hour meters,recording barometers etc. probably overkill but just habits drilled in to me at a younger age.

 

Mine's quite similar to Minnie's but add engine hours if engine run. .....

Great point. While I don't always record engine hours, I do add it to the comment field whenever I top off fuel.

 

I use the basic one you can get at any West Marine.
I'm not worried about it being 'legal', I just like actually sitting at my nav station and hand writing in it.
Spread sheets are easy to come up with, easy to type in, and soulless.

 

The pre-printed log books and/or computerized spread sheets seem to be organized around passage making. When we do a passage, for us its mandatory to log position at a minimum every hour, and plot that position on paper charts for when the battery dies and the satellites fall from the sky. Also heading, speed, weather, currents etc. to give you a chance of a DR position when the apocalypse arrives

For more casual coastal cruising, we just keep a bound plain paper notebook where we keep track of engine hours since fueling and oil changes, maintenance items, who we saw, where we went, who came with us, how we liked it, etc.

We like a paper log as it's one more thing that doesn't depend on some software geek not having a bad day.

 

I'm a software geek, funny, I prefer paper so you non-geeks can actually understand it.

 

Chuckles, I'm more of a hardware nerd so I understand your point. You know what they say, without hardware the software would be nothing but bad poetry And to be fair to both sides, hardware guys have bad days too.

 

find I'm less stressed about my circle of probable position when offshore. Especially now given it's usually irrelevant with GPS/radar etc. Doesn't matter much if you're even a few miles off when you're away from the hard edges but agree keeping a running DR in the log is important. Fun to see if it matches gps. Also like to do simple lower limb moon or noon shots on occasion for same reason. Ask each watch to log any course change and vmg or estimate for each board. Usually not much going on if weather is good so gives everyone something to do. Have them do it on the paper chart as well. agree it's good to keep those skills up.

 

Speaking about the weather. I ask for a BP and tend in each entry. I have been nailed in the past when I did not have a barometer. My watch has one.

 

....My watch has one.

That's neat. What watch is it?

 

Here's the log I created before our cruise. Page1 would be filled out before a "passage". One or more page 2's would be filled out during the passage. Page 3 tracked people we met. I had a maintenance page around somewhere but I don't know what I did with it. I have this in MS Word if anyone wants the original.

Log