A vivid record of a Kraken sail
Enhance your log with some interesting remarks and illustrative illustrations
Here we are in the middle of the cruising season. But soon, far too soon, it will be the time of year when logs are handed in for judgement. Many will consist of a bunch of photographs interspersed with a few bits of text. (Weather nasty. Yogurt off. Mouse in bilges. Saw Kraken.) The clubhouse will resound to the dull thunks of judges’ foreheads hitting the table as they slide into the deep sleep of purest boredom.
It was perhaps slightly different for (say) Christopher Columbus. Noone of the Clock. Dayes Run 10 Leagues. Course W., he would have written, or words to that effect, since by an oversight he was not British. Weather fair. Wind NE. Position 300 Leagues SW of Spaine. Remarks: cannot see China yet, but any daye now. Men keep asking whether roaring noise is Mightie Waters falling over Edge of World. Attempt to reassure them that it is only Bosun who cannot tolerate ye Beanes. Mem. sleep with Sworde under Pillow as all are Restless and Turbulent. Saw Kraken.
The essentials have changed little since those far-off times, at any rate in the mind of someone who back in the mists of history examined us for a Day Skipper ticket by shouting a lot and compelling us to keep copious notes at 15-minute intervals between Felixstowe and Bradwell Power Station. The idea, as we all know, is to make entries as often as is consistent with establishing an EP or estimated position by working back. Once an hour should do it.
It is also important to make interesting remarks, eg saw Kraken.
Many will complain that modern electronics make such procedures redundant. The standard counter to this is that a lightning strike may disable the boat’s electrics at the same time as a swift but lethal war disables GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and Loran, and you may in the resulting confusion have plunged your binoculars into the butter, making it impossible to use the popular read-the-name-on-the-buoy technique or indeed see the Kraken. So there you will be, reduced to compass and log, in fog. Francis Drake, Sir William Franklin and Captain Cook, to name but a few, all agree that you will now be glad you knew in which direction you had been sailing for the last seven hours or so.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I hear you cry. But by hell it is dull. All right, then. Dispense with the logbook. Take the paper chart. Mark with a 2B pencil fixes, transits and anything resembling a position, together with course steered, course over ground, speed. Remarks – waterspout, saw Kraken, you know the kind of thing – can be inscribed where they actually happened, for later transfer to a neat narrative book. And when the fog comes down, the densely- inscribed blue surface of the paper will greet you like an old, calm friend, no matter what foghorns may boom from the pearly gloom or suckerfestooned tentacles come snaking over the coaming.
The presentation log is a different matter. Illustrations are crucial, though photographs are losing their impact (this is us alongside in Port Anodyne Marina, mending the ship’s washing machine. The Kraken was just out of shot). Earlier explorers took painters like the unsung genius William Hodges, who accompanied Captain Cook on his second expedition. Hodges and his ilk added romance and fascination to what would otherwise have been a pretty straightforward account of a voyage to the South Seas. In the 19th century, with the birth of yacht cruising, it was standard practice to take along a paintbox and perpetrate watercolour sketches of the passing scene, not to mention the Kraken if spotted.
While the paintbox has fallen out of fashion, in the opinion of many it is still king – as the great Claudia Myatt, marine painter extraordinary (and cartoonist on the previous page) points out in her new book, which is called Keeping a Sketchbook Diary, available from www.claudiamyatt.co.uk , £9.99. Claudia reckons that any logbook can be beefed up by a bit of sketching, and furthermore that just about anyone can do it, given a few basic hints, which she provides. She gives instructions for the portrayal of (among many other things) croissants, boats, islands, birds, wine, weather, whales, rocks, and bowsprits but not, so far, the Kraken. Application to this book will keep the nonsailing members of the crew busily occupied, and make your log a thing of beauty. Closely followed, it may even keep the judges awake.