Do you count your sea miles? How?

[captain58sailin]

I have never really stopped and counted my overall miles. Unlike atoll, I would count my commercial fishing miles too. I tend to view the whole thing as a measuring contest. My Father always said, there is always someone out there that is tougher than you. I am far more interested in my experiences, not to tell someone else about, for my own amusement of me. The miles don't make the seafarer. I once heard about a "40 fathom club" out of San Francisco, their claim to fame was they had sailed out to the 40 fathom line and back.

[sailorboy1]

I stopped logging miles and hours. I decided I didn't really care and couldn't think of why anyone else would really about how many miles I sailed.

The added bonus was that it doesn't really matter to me if the knot meter fouls up and stops working (I didn't even take the cover off of it last year).

[SkiprJohn]

I've kept a sailing journal since the early 70s and don't count miles, just hours. I've missed entries when I was just crewing but always counted the hours I was the skipper.
If you decide that you want to get a Captain's License through the Coast Guard then you'll need to prove a certain number of days on a vessel. Good to have a journal or log.

[Dhillen]

Funny to come across this thread as just yesterday I was thinking the exact same thing. I always keep a daily log whether cruising or on a day sail and have only sailed on my own boats. Instead of hunting out all the logbooks and adding up the miles (like I am ever going to do that) I decided for the heck of it to plot from memory my main cruises on Google Earth, using the Ruler/Path function.

While rough it came out to about what I thought it would be: 25,000 offshore miles for me and 20,000 for the wife. Combined that is almost 50,000 miles - but does that mean anything at all? I don't think so. Since we always sail together we probably just keep making the same mistakes together!

Cheers.

Dhillen

[atoll]

Originally Posted by captain58sailin

I have never really stopped and counted my overall miles. Unlike atoll, I would count my commercial fishing miles too. I tend to view the whole thing as a measuring contest. My Father always said, there is always someone out there that is tougher than you. I am far more interested in my experiences, not to tell someone else about, for my own amusement of me. The miles don't make the seafarer. I once heard about a "40 fathom club" out of San Francisco, their claim to fame was they had sailed out to the 40 fathom line and back.

i really only keep the log book as a record of voyages i have sailed,the first 5000 miles were purely for my yachtmasters,after that it is great to have a record with dates of where i was,when,on meeting other cruisers that you remember meeting in far off places i can go back and check!

"was it 89,95,99,01,03,05,07.........that we met in the caribbean?
or we were in vanuatu in 96, 2002,and in 2010................

the best was when i went to do my commercial rya tickets in 2008 and getting the instructor to fill in my log book.........at around 97,000 miles

[SV Sea Monkey]

I used to keep track, mostly because USCG wanted it for licensing purposes. I only ever counted A-B distance for voyages of at least a few days. I stopped counting/keeping track when I let the license lapse. Recently I needed to keep track again for certification for a program--once I met the minimum requirement I stopped counting. I'd rather collect friends, photos, and sea stories than miles. If I have accurate records, it's a lot harder to embellish the stories (I guess you could consider that good or bad).

[captain58sailin]

I'll probably regret not keeping closer track. I haven't yet. My company keeps track of the sea time, when I am working for them. I log voyages regardless their function. I don't count miles.

[reefhunter]

We did an around the world trip about 20 years ago. The boat we used on that trip is my 50' Rybo-Spencer with an NA Mercedes engine which has 8200 hrs on it. It was new at the time we made the trip and hasn't been o/h yet. That correlates to about 350,000 road miles. After that I quit counting.

If I really need to know - there are port-to-port distance charts to use.

[Capt Phil]

Towing commercially, we used charts to log each passage in the PNW except while commercial fishing... who knew and who cared.
On deliveries always had paper charts, even after chart plotters became the go. Always gave me piece of mind to be able to look at a paper chart for dead reckoning, VMG and course corrections.
Personally, I've never addd it all up except when needed for licensing and insurance purposes.
Was involved in a court case in the 70's where a poorly anchored pleasure craft drifted down on me overnight and the judge told me he held me, as a professional mariner, to a higher standard than the fuzzy assed lawyer who owned and was aboard the other vessel. Having charted and logged our anchorage position over 2 days and the paper charts placed 100% of the blame on the other boat. Phil

[Robin3]

Originally Posted by donradcliffe

I used to use the mechanical log on the speedo, but switched to the Garmin GPS, which has a total miles traveled and is more accurate than the mechanical log.

GPS log distance will also include hops between inaccurate fixes or 'positional wander', WE have always had speed/distance meters to record distance sailed through the water and recorded these distances in our logs, together with the distances recorded by the GPS sets which of course is distance sailed over the ground and takes no account of miles gained or lost caused by tidal or other currents. I kept a simple spreadsheet for years to record miles sailed, engine hours, miles motored (extrapolated by hrs motored times cruise speed under engine as we always motored at a fixed engine rpm which gave 6kts) Anal I know, but I would use the spreadsheet to produce Annual summary figures showing Totals sailed total motored and the percentage actually achieved under sail alone each year. If nothing else it evaporated the occasional 'fisherman's claims' and each year made me try harder to use the motor less, although much of our motoring in fairness was done just going in and out of harbours ( harbours not marinas note) rather than being out in the open sea. On average we logged some 2,000nms per year more or less so I often say we did 50,000 nms in the last 25 years because prior to then was a different 'we' ( I therefore leave out the previous 25 years and maybe another 30,000nms when admiral #1 was in residence or I sailed with the lads .) all my figures were on my own boats, I didn't add in miles on other peoples boats or racing when in general I was not in control.

[ranger58sb]

Robin, sort of a digression (apologies to OP) but didn't I remember when you and your wife were coming from England you were moving onto a power boat to live aboard? Not a Beneteau?

-Chris

[Robin3]

Originally Posted by ranger42c

Robin, sort of a digression (apologies to OP) but didn't I remember when you and your wife were coming from England you were moving onto a power boat to live aboard? Not a Beneteau?

-Chris

WE did indeed move here from England back in April 2012 to live on a Tradewinds 47 motor yacht, which we kept in Halifax Harbor marina here in Daytona Beach but before we got to start our cruising plans proper, I Had a stroke( in August 2012) from which thanks to my wonderful wife getting me quickly to hospital I have pretty much fully recovered. After I was released from hospital, in September2012, we still lived on the mobo, but decided to sell it and buy a condo, which is where we live now, overlooking the ICW in Daytona Beach just north of the Sea Breeze Bridge. We decided the mobo was too big to use just for weekending and odd days so when it sold we bought a 36ft Beneteau Oceanis 36 center Cockpit, and have gone back to my real love of sailing, the sailboat (surprisingly) being more easily managed by us two wrinklies when docking/undocking, especially in a breeze. We have succumbed to the oldies setup however of in-mast furling and roller genoa but hey we are still here and will still be cruising, with our Bahamas plans back in place for once we finish refitting the benny. she is back afloat now (In Halifax Harbor, Daytona Beach) with all new electronics, fresh bottom paint and epoxy barrier coats, new 10ft RIB, new outboard motor and stern dinghy davits (all to make things easier to manage), plus amotor lift crane, and all new canvas is in the process of being fitted, plus a new in-mast mainsail is on it's way from our favourite English sailmaker since there are no local ones here weirdly and our UK guy was much cheaper, even with shipping costs.

I am really looking forward to getting back afloat and used to the new boat which so far we have only motored to/from the boat lift. Initially we will just day or weekend sail with shortish trips mostly up/down the 'ditch' but then come the end of hurricane season and with some nice weather next spring we may look farther afield out to the Bahamas or even northwards to see the sister in law & family up in Charleston SC.

I was very lucky to recover well and am very grateful to have a second chance to do what I love and with the very best First Mate in the world to help me enjoy it.

[zeehag]

i only know approximations based on legs of journeys recorded, not including my childhood miles or my sailing to catalina XX number of times miles or day sailing.
i have and sometimes still do sail with op on their boats, some of which i include--i donot include daysails on opb.

[boatpoker]

I got into the habit of logging hours run from day one of my first boat. I did it for my maintenance schedule, never kept track of miles.

[Zanshin]

I have to admit that I compromise between the GPS miles (too big) and the straight line distance on the chart; on long ocean passages I use the distance between two plotted marks, on day sails I'll use Google earth to roughly chart my tacks enroute and use that distance:

Zanshin sailing Logbook

(Just noticed that the daily pictures from the logbook aren't complete, I'll have to add those in!)