Free resource
A blank logbook ready to print on a single A4 landscape sheet, with a worked example and a note on what belongs in each column. Built for leisure sailing and small commercial craft, based on what French Division 240 expects offshore.
Count one page per day at sea, or one per watch if your passage calls for it. The button below opens your browser's print dialog: choose landscape, and “Save as PDF” if you would rather keep it on your phone than print it.
Time — local time, or UTC if you are offshore. Write which one at the head of the page and do not switch mid-passage.
Position — latitude and longitude from the GPS, in degrees and decimal minutes. This is the column search and rescue will read first.
Course — the course steered, compass or over ground. State which one once, at the head of the page.
Speed — through the water or over ground. The difference between the two tells you about the current, so record both when you can.
Wind — direction in degrees or by compass point, strength in knots or Beaufort. Stay with the same unit throughout.
Sea and visibility — sea state, swell, and what you can actually see. Visibility closing in is a fact: record it at the hour it happens.
Barometer — the reading, but above all the trend. Three hectopascals lost in three hours reads far better in a column than in a memory.
Sail or engine — the current configuration, and the engine hour meter reading. That reading is what will drive your maintenance.
Remarks — everything else: vessel sighted, sail change, even a minor breakdown, VHF call, someone taken ill. This is the column that counts in a dispute.
Vessel name and registration, date, port of departure, intended destination, crew list, and the forecast you consulted with its time. Five minutes alongside beat a reconstruction three weeks later.
One line per hour offshore, one line at every significant change inshore. The useful habit is to name someone responsible on each watch: what belongs to nobody gets done by nobody.
A position, a course, an observation. But let no incident go unrecorded, however minor: that is precisely what your insurer will look for if something happens later.
A washed-out logbook proves nothing. Waterproof pouch, a pen that survives damp, and a photo of the page at each port call if you want a backup.
Correct a mistake with a single line through it, the right value beside it and your initials. A page scratched or whited out loses its value as evidence, and that is the one rule that is genuinely non-negotiable.
French regulation does not prescribe a format, it prescribes content: enough to reconstruct the passage. This template covers the expected headings. What matters in a customs check or an insurance survey is that it is kept regularly and without erasures.
None in everyday leisure use: they all describe the same document. On a commercial vessel, however, the deck log is distinct from the engine room log, which records machinery parameters and interventions.
At least as long as the limitation period of your insurance policy, and longer if the vessel may be sold on: a complete navigation history is a selling point, in the same way as a service record.
Paper never runs out of battery and remains the reference for a single boat. Digital takes over as soon as there are several vessels, crews relieving one another, or an obligation to produce a history during an audit.
Paper holds up while the fleet is one or two boats. Beyond that, the history scatters between crews. Smart Sailors keeps the log, the engine hour meters and the maintenance plan in one place, offline included.
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