Do you count your sea miles? How?

[muttnik]

Originally Posted by LifePart2

So, do you record your sea miles? If you do, do you keep a running total of your A to B rhumb line distance, or do you use the chartplotter? And these people who have sailed 50k or 200k, how is that measured?

I kept a personal log up until I the time I did my Yachtmaster. I believe the RYA expect logged miles to be taken from the boat's log (ie distance travelled through the water). Certainly that's what I understand by "miles logged".

Couldn't think of a good reason to diligently log personal miles after that. However any vessel I'm skippering (including my own boat) I keep a copy of the log book. If I'm mate or crew on a long delivery I'll remember roughly the distance (from the boat's log). Occasional sailing on other people's boats accounts for less than 10% of the miles I do, so I tend to forget it.
Bottom line: I estimate it by adding things up in my head if anyone asks (which takes couple of minutes). I definitely underestimate it because I forget the small stuff but as the big stuff makes up the bulk it's accurate to within 20%

[nwdiver]

A to B

[belizesailor]

Nope. USCG only cares about "days" and I dont feel the need to impress anyone with miles.

[SecondBase]

Just hold your voyage up next to the continent paralleled. You'll have taken your measure.

[JPA Cate]

We keep a trip log for passages, using the method Jim described above. It varies considerably how many entries per day, usually never less than four, but sometimes many. I felt quite relieved to be able to show it to Customs in the country we arrived at to show documentation of why it had taken us that long to complete the journey.

Just sayin'.

[rognvald]

Yes. GPS. It is part of consistent log recording whether daysailing or on passage. Does it really matter if you've sailed tens of thousands of miles or only several hundred if the GPS has a built in error of plus/minus 10%? It's not a trigonometry problem that requires provable exactitude but a general record of approximate miles sailed. Should it matter to you if someone has more marbles in the jar than you? I guess it depends on your personality.

[Amapola]

I keep a log/journal for each trip and make an an entry every day we are aboard. Our Garmin chartplotter has trip and odometer functions. I record our daily mileage, weather, hours traveled, and a synopsis of the day.

[LifePart2]

Wow, I never expected to get so many replies!

As most of you have said, unless you need it for a commercial ticket or similar, who really cares?

But then it is kind of fun to know.

So far, I haven't kept track, as I keep forgetting to write it in the log book and having quickly realised that the GPS grossly overestimates. So I have no idea what I have done so far. But I built a plugin on my blog that can import the GPX track from OpenCPN, so I think I will modify that a bit so that it adds up the miles from that.

That would achieve two goals:

1) no work (once i have tweaked the plugin)
2) gives a pretty accurate a-b but including around the headlands type of measurement.

Thanks for some fascinating reading!

Noel

[Stu Jackson]

Originally Posted by 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.

Me, too.

[ranger58sb]

Originally Posted by LifePart2

So far, I haven't kept track, as I keep forgetting to write it in the log book and having quickly realised that the GPS grossly overestimates.

I'm surprised you've said your GPS log is so inaccurate. Ours doesn't seem to be...

-Chris