The information in this page is only for non commercial pleasure vessels in the UK. For other territories you will need to check your local regulations.

 

We had to do a lot of research when designing our new sailing log books to make sure we included everything that was required by regulation as well as what yachtsmen wanted in a marine Log Book.

 

Most of our sailing consists of sociable summer weekends on familiar waters punctuated by occasional cruising holidays to new places. For navigation on longer passages we need hour by hour log keeping; for pottering we just need to note down times of high water and weather forecasts. We also like plenty of space for narrative, photographs and the odd menu/leaflet/thingy that we paste into the log. Once the season is over it is then much more enjoyable to look back on the whole story of our summer cruising.

 

So, what are the regulations in the UK governing the use marine log books for pleasure craft? SOLAS V. If you really want you can find the full ‘Information on the regulations applicable to pleasure vessels’ here from the MCA (Maritime and Coastguard Agency). The relevant part, for sailing log books is somewhere in the middle, titled ‘SOLAS V for pleasure craft’. They also have a useful PDF download here also called ‘SOLAS V for pleasure craft’.

 

The RYA Have the same regulations here which contain some useful explanatory notes. The RYA notes for the Voyage / Passage planning are:

 

For small vessels and pleasure-craft the degree of voyage planning will be depend upon the size of vessel, its crew and the length of the voyage. The MCA expects all mariners to make a careful assessment of any proposed voyage taking into account all dangers to navigation, weather forecasts, tidal predictions and other relevant factors including the competence of the crew.

 

RYA Note:  Skippers should note that this regulation changes the status of passage planning on small boats from simply good practice to a requirement under UK law for vessels proceeding to sea. “Going to sea” is defined as proceeding outside of 'categorized waters' (most of the Solent area counts as categorised waters, as do many estuaries). See MSN 1776 for full details.

 

In short, there is no requirement to keep a yacht log book, but having a voyage / passage plan is required. This could simply be a note of the tide times and weather forecast, when in familiar waters, coupled with the skippers own local knowledge of navigational dangers and safe haven en route. For longer passages it is good practice, and encouraged, to write down this information.

 

We designed our new yacht log books to be flexible enough for traditional navigation but also to allow space for a more complete narrative of where we went and who we met along the way.

 

Every sailor we spoke to has their favoured methods of marine log keeping, so we decided to leave the columns on the navigation side of the page blank to suit your own preferences and the type of sailing you do.

 

A sailing log book can be more than a navigation aid, it can also be a complete sailing diary. We hope our new marine log books help to make your cruising more enjoyable as well as seamanlike!

 

Our current range of Log Books are available from our online shop: