Every sailor I know has a logbook story. Mine involves a lot of evenings with a calculator.
I keep my boat in Poole, and I’m working towards my commercial skipper qualification. Like every course and certificate on the water, it asks you to prove your sea time: the days afloat, the miles, the night hours, the passages you skippered. All of it has to be written down, and all of it has to add up.
For years mine lived in a paper logbook and a spreadsheet. When the time came to count it, I had nearly 500 trips to go through. Some had the times written down, some didn’t. Some had the boat, some just said “the usual”. I spent evenings transcribing my own handwriting and adding it all up.
Somewhere in the middle of that, I decided there had to be a better way.
What Saltlog does
Press Quick Log when you cast off, and Saltlog records the passage for you: your track, distance, speed, stops and the weather on the day. It keeps recording with the screen off and without signal, and it’s built for sailors and motor boaters alike. Every trip adds to a record of your miles and qualifications that you can share with a skipper, school or charter company.
Every trip keeps its photos, its crew and its story together, and you can share a live link so the people ashore know where you are.
My first testers found their own shorthand for it. Several of them, without being asked, called it “Strava for the sea”. I’ll take that.
A sea full of Saltloggers
The logbook is where Saltlog starts, but it isn’t what gets me most excited. What does is the people.
Boating has always been a community. It’s the skipper who lends you a fender, the club bar after a race, the marina where everyone knows whose boat is whose, the instructor who remembers your first night passage. Most of that has never had a home online, or it’s been scattered across group chats, noticeboards and notebooks.
I want Saltlog to be that home. A connected world of Saltloggers: people and organisations who share a love for their boats and the sea.
The first pieces are already there. Crew get every trip in their own logbook, so a passage belongs to everyone who sailed it. Clubs, marinas, schools and charter companies can run their own Groups, post events and talk to their members. Squawk lets you hail the boats around you. Explore shows where people actually go: the passages and harbours the community uses, not just what’s on the chart.
Picture it a few seasons from now. You arrive somewhere new and see who’s in, which anchorage held in last night’s blow, and which local club is racing on Saturday. A newcomer finds a skipper who needs crew and starts building miles. A marina greets its berth holders, a school follows its students’ progress, and a family ashore watches the little dot come home.
Saltlog is where boating people find each other.
It’ll grow the way the best communities do, shaped by the people in it. That’s why Founder members get a real vote on what we build next, and why I read every message that comes in.
Launching in November
Saltlog launches on iPhone and Android in early November. Logging is free, with no limit on trips, and it always will be. Your logs belong to you, and you can export them at any time.
Saltlog Plus(£2.99 a month or £29.99 a year) adds the extras: Deckhand, an AI assistant that reads photographed pages from an old paper logbook into the app; your boat’s own instruments in the log; live location sharing; more photos and video; and every chart, every season.
For people who want to be part of it from the start, there’s Founder membership, limited to 200 members. As well as everything in Plus, Founders get early access to new features, a private channel, quarterly calls with me, and a real vote on what we build next.
Saltlog keeps every mile on the record.
Saltlog is independent. It isn’t endorsed by any governing body, and it works with several syllabuses, not just one. It was built by someone who goes boating, for people who go boating.
If you’ve got a logbook story of your own, or something you’d love Saltlog to do, I’d really like to hear it: hello@saltlog.co.uk.
See you on the water.