Far from being mere empirical data, you can tell a lot about
a skipper and mate by leafing through their logbooksMORE
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T
his was my log entry for 25 March
1977: ‘1400 – Horrifi ed to witness the
formation of a waterspout about a mile
to leeward. Started like a cloud on the
water reaching up to heaven. Then, out of a
squall above, a dark tornado came fi ngering
down until they joined
together. Apparently the
wind in the centre can hit
200mph, so it’s best not to
hang around. However, it
tumbled into the sea, great
was the fall of it, and it left
us with enough breeze to
try for St Croix.’
My wife’s log entry
indicates different
priorities: ‘1830. Wind falling. Skipper getting
the grumps. Bluggoes, Xu-Xu and Irish Stew for
supper, followed by lemon curd tart. Beautiful
sunset. Silent except for the crackling of sails.
Off to bed with Bertie Wooster.’
Sadly perhaps, she had to make do with Bertie
in a mildewed old volume, but she slept well
in those days and enjoyed sweet dreams in the
privacy of her watch below.
Nobody had told me then that a log book
should contain lots of columns, so we didn’t
have any. We didn’t waste our substance on pre-
ruled log books either. Instead, as I look through
my library, I fi nd rows of ancient exercise books.
None of the early ones has a column to their
name. They did run to a sort of gap on the left
with the time of each entry, but, on the ocean
at least, the schedule was arbitrary. We’d only
trouble the log if anything signifi cant happened
or we had nothing else to do. Otherwise we
didn’t bother, except at noon when, by ancient
tradition, I noted down the yacht’s lat and long
position as determined by, usually, a running fi x
on the sun. If I’d managed morning stars, this
would be logged and plotted after breakfast, but
it was around noon that the clock of our lives
turned. Here’s an entry:
‘1200 – 3° 31’N 46° 58’W. Further north than
the DR. Must be the outpouring of the Amazon
even out here, 200 miles offshore. Steering
330°T with full main, jib and balloon staysail.
Lovely day. Had haircut and shaved off beard.’Any weather data are non-empirical; they
emerge only as comments in the narrative.
The item that should have merited a column
and never got one was the barometer. It was
religiously monitored, as it still is, but was only
entered if it started playing tricks.
One reason for lack
of data in those early
logs was that we had no
instruments to give us any.
Dead reckoning was by
compass and looking over
the side to see how fast we
were going. We became
adept at this. I’ve lost the
knack now I have a dial.
My log books today
appear to come from a different planet. The
hardware, as it were, remains exercise books,
cheap though stoutly bound, but the left-hand
pages of the spreads are ruled into columns for
time, log, course steered, position, COG, SOG
and weather. I even note when my engine is on
or shut down, so as to check the hours since the
last oil change. The right-hand pages, thank
goodness, are still reserved for ‘remarks’, which
remain full of colour. They might be ‘Bridge
Buoy at hand’, but could just as easily read,
‘Skipper had kippers for breakfast – disgusting.
Fred seasick and praying for an early death.
Mainsail just blew out. Why do we bother?’
Looking back through the yellowed, dog-eared
leaves, the best fi nds are often the guest entries.
We’ve never had a visitors’ book. Instead, we
encourage those bold enough to accept our
hospitality to inscribe their name, rank and
number in the log, together with any comments,
sketches, photos or poems they feel moved to
share. Unconstrained by the format of a ‘bought’
book, they can use a whole page if they like.
Some do and their pithy observations are often
beyond price, but my space here is short, so they
will have to wait for another occasion. W‘Skipper had kippers
for breakfast –
disgusting. Fred
seasick and praying
for an early death’