It's becoming increasingly unusual, in these days of electronic navigation, but I do like to keep a log. It records every outing in the boat, the short hops from the marina berth to an overnight anchorage, as well as major summer holiday voyages. The log book is nothing fancy, not one of those leather covered jobs gold blocked with the boat's name, just a hard-backed A4 volume that I draw my own columns in as I go along.
It started, I suppose, following the example of the people who first took us sailing. There was perhaps greater need for a log in those pre-Decca days. But now we can tell at the touch of a button exactly where we are, how far off-course tide and leeway are pushing us, and precisely what heading we need to steer to cancel out their effect, is there really any point?
An awful lot of sailors don't think so. How many yacht-owners have proudly bought a new log book for a new vessel, and then filled in nothing after the delivery trip? It's not too difficult to understand why. With GPS, and increasingly commonly a chart plotter, it's tempting to do no “proper” navigating at all - simply steer where the display tells you.
But at the very least, it's sensible to note down the position once an hour, say, just in case the electronics fail, and you need a starting point for an old-fashioned DR plot. Prudent yachties note down the shipping forecasts, and coastguard safety bulletins, too.
But why bother to transfer these scribbles from the chart table notebook to a permanent record once the voyage is over, and the information all becomes ancient history?
The value of any history is that it contains lessons for present and future. It's often helpful to look back at the old logs and see how long a particular passage took, and what the wind and tide were doing then, so that we can work out how long it's likely to take this time, and what is the best time to leave, to get the tide right at the other end. There is in fact a lot of really useful information in there.
There's satisfaction, too, in keeping up an old tradition. But perhaps the main benefit of the log is pure pleasure. It's a wonderful memory jogger. Sit at home and read it on a miserable winter night, and you're instantly transported back to the long hot days of summer: sunny spinnaker runs and idyllic anchorages.
Even when the weather wasn't kind and the passage was fraught, there's usually a trigger for a happy memory - the name of the restaurant where we had a restoring supper, when we finally made it to port, perhaps, or a sighting of seals or dolphins, or a particularly spectacular sunset.
We are on the 12th volume now. There are four (10,000 miles) for the Hustler 25.5 which taught us to sail in the Eighties, and seven (30,000 miles) for the Sigma 33 we raced and cruised for 16 years., and one for the Grand Soleil 40 which we have owned for just over a year and already sailed some 4,000 miles in.
They provide a fascinating record of (quite literally) how far we have come. But the logs are also an investment in the future: I can look forward to reading them all from start to finish - and reliving all those magical moments - when I finally hang up my sailing boots.
But I'm hoping to fill up a few more volumes before that happens!
(Taken from an article which first appeared in the magazine Norfolk Afloat)
