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Three Sheets Northwest
THE EVOLUTION OF LOG KEEPING
by Marty McOmber Date: August 25-26 Trip: Saltair (Stuart Channel) to Princess Cove (Wallace Island) Weather: Sunny + Hot Notes: First time to Wallace Island and it was spectacular! Stern tied in Princess Cove right next to the dinghy dock. Deb + Randy came to meet us for a few hours, then headed home. We made dinner, then went for an amazing dinghy ride – endless stars, the call of a loon, the sounds of harbor seals. Magical.
cloud, well out of sight of anyone residing under the sea, but easy enough for us to pull up whenever needed. According to Wikipedia, “a logbook (a ship's logs or simply log) is a record of important events in the management, operation, and navigation of a ship. It is essential to traditional navigation, and must be filled in at least daily.” It goes on to say, “Today's ship's log has grown to contain many other types of information, and is a record of operational data relating to a ship or submarine, such as weather conditions, times of routine events and significant incidents, crew complement or what ports were docked at and when.” When we bought our Passport 40 back in 2012, we needed a new logbook and carefully constructed a page template that sought to capture what we felt was the most important information. In addition to the date, trip, distance traveled, weather conditions and forecast, we included fields for recording port and starboard fuel and water tank levels, and battery voltage and amp hours for both start and house banks. We could record engine hours and average speed. There was even a place to list the holding tank level. Wikipedia would have been proud. All of this data is important for any competent boater to know and track while underway. At least in theory. And I
We recently went through our boat’s logbook, something we’ve rarely done in the past. Flipping through the years of experiences and memories contained on the pages of the three-ring binder was both surprising and gratifying. Most importantly, it got us thinking about the real benefit of creating and maintaining a logbook and why, going forward, we plan to be more committed to keeping that tradition alive, even as we rethink the traditional approach to keeping a log. We’re in the midst of renaming our boat, which includes the important step of removing the old name, wherever it’s located on and in the vessel. Otherwise, we might tempt the wrath of a certain underwater deity on whose good side we wish to remain. Unfortunately, our customized logbook that lives in our navigator’s station had the old name on every page. Rather than physically removing the book and consigning it to storage, we decided instead to scan the hand-written pages produced over the past nine years of cruising this boat in and around the Salish Sea and beyond. These pages are now in the 48º NORTH
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