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Logging The Details
by The First Mate
Since this article contains the irreverence, (with regard to sailing matters considered sacred and deadly serious by many, including some who sail very little if at all,) for which we are fast becoming infamous, this preface is by way of a health warning:
Reading The Next Sentence May Cause Your Blood Pressure To Rise
Intolerably.
You have been warned...
We have the usual dreary log book to satisfy any official who has been given the divine right, by some new edict or other, to know whence we come and how we got to wherever we are.
In addition, we keep a Companion Log for all that it would be nice to record but would clutter the official effort.
In the Drear Log we put an asterisk anywhere there is something to be expanded upon and the Companion Log takes the overflow. Looking back over the one for our schooner's 27th Atlantic crossing, it was fun to see all the doodles that had been made - suggesting improvements to
things: a description of a peculiarly complex card game a Croatian chap had tried to teach us; descriptions of the fish that had escaped us and the lures they had taken with them; and, very usefully, a reminder of all the things that had been fixed temporarily and would need fixing properly once we reached our destination.
We were surprised to find we had completely forgotten one or two repairs because things were no longer causing annoyance and might have been overlooked were it not for the
Companion Log.
Unfortunately, on her 28th crossing, there wasn't much time for log-keeping of any description - there's only so much two of you can manage in some situations - but what made me laugh,
after we arrived in the Azores was an official, upon discovering that we neither use waypoints nor record our track on the GPS
(we've never even thought about doing it, to be honest) saying "Well how could you have got here then?" with a shocked expression.
"Same way as your pal Columbus" we said, but he couldn't see what we thought was so funny.
He was right, of course. Columbus may have falsified his logs but at least there was something written in them for every day!
In case you're thinking we're completely mad, we do plot our position on a paper chart at frequent intervals but often that is all there's time, or in our opinion, need, for, when out in the middle of an ocean. Near land we are as log-conscious as anyone with half a brain should be.
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