The Logbook With Sir Robin Knox-Johnston
Book Extract
A logbook should not be looked on merely as a means of recording your noon position and cataloguing sail changes; it is a record of your entire sailing history, says Robin.
At the end of the season I go through my logbooks and make an analysis of the season’s sailing. Then I add them to the long shelf at home full of logbooks. They date from 1965, when Suhaili sailed from Bombay, and extend right through to last weekend’s cruise.
They cover boats as diverse as a 92ft catamaran (the Jules Verne circumnavigation in the multihull ENZA New Zealand) and the Sail Training Association’s topsail schooner Malcolm Miller, and every one of the over half a million miles I have sailed – with the exception of one race from La Rochelle to Gulfport, Mississippi, when the French charterers walked off with the book, even though it was written in English!
In that row of books is encapsulated my sailing life. The logbook is an essential part of the navigation equipment of a boat. In it should go all fixes, bearings, position lines, GPS fixes, course, error of the compass, speed, wind, barometer and weather conditions – everything you might wish to refer to later.
A good log should allow anyone to calculate where the vessel was every few hours, thus enabling the boat that loses all power from its navigation instruments to be able to work out an accurate dead reckoning and get safely to its destination.
The Merchant Navy trained me to keep a log properly. They had to be accurate and no errors were allowed. If a mistake was made, it had to be crossed out and initialled, so that it would be clear at any enquiry that a change had been made.
But just because the log might be produced as evidence in the event of an accident does not mean that it cannot be written for general interest as well. Sightings of anything of interest should go in, such as ships and marine life, sail changes, anything the crew are doing aboard the boat – it helps to recapture the flavour of a particular voyage.
My entries showed a noticeable change when our daughter was about 12 years old and to encourage her enthusiasm we took to selecting postcards of ports and anchorages visited and pasting them into the logbook where gaps allowed. If we visited a port more than once, the card had to be different, and then a competition developed to find the oldest or most amusing one.
There is another note from that era referring to a blue-hulled ‘ferry’ with three cream masts sighted at anchor off the island of Rhum!
Such entries bring back happy memories and at the back, on a spare page, I have kept a record of the crew who sailed with me along with their addresses, many out of date, some only dimly remembered.
Some years ago, when I was researching a rather interesting case of an East Indiaman abandoned in the 1730s, I went to the East India Library in London and asked to see the logbook. After 10 minutes it was produced – a large, leather-bound book filled with copperplate writing, but the entries were as clear and understandable as a ship’s log of today.
The incident I wanted – the abandonment of the Captain and officers, but not some of the seamen – appeared in less than three lines, but there it was, documented.
When we were organising the first BOC Challenge, we decided to give a valuable prize of a sextant to the writer of the best log from among the competitors. This was not just altruism: we hoped it would give us some valuable quotes.
The winner wrote a fascinating log, a very clear and interesting account of his circumnavigation which must be a treasure to him now. The runner-up was good, and then there was a gap. The bulk of them were so-so, and the poorest came from one of the most experienced sailors in the fleet who confined himself to entering the date and the noon position only.
This was doubly sad as he had picked up one of his fellowcompetitors who had had to abandon his boat, and has no record of the incident. We had more information on how the situation had developed at race headquarters, but we could never have the full picture.
The Indiaman’s little-known adventure can be read 260 years later; the BOC rescue will probably be forgotten – just because the log was not kept.
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Knox-Johnston On Sailing is written by Robin Knox-Johnston. Robin Knox-Johnston rose to fame in 1969 when he became the first person to sail non-stop and solo around the world. In an illustrious sailing career he has also set records for the fastest circumnavigation and last raced solo round the world in 2007, aged 68. He was knighted in 1995.