Saillogger records where you went on its own. The notes and photos are the part only you can add, and they are what turns a set of tracks into something worth reading later. Everything you write is pinned to the position you wrote it at, so it comes back on the map, in the trip, in the journal and in a timelapse.
Three ways to write a note
- The pencil on the live page, while underway. This is the one to reach for at sea: the note lands on the boat's current position, so it is anchored to the place and the moment.
- The notes panel, from the book icon on the live page. Open an entry and edit it. Use this to tidy up something you typed one-handed, or to add to a stay.
- A position marker in a finished trip. Open the trip, click one of the little boat icons along the track, and type into the Notes box in the popup. This is how you add a note after the event, at the right place.
There is no wrong order. Many boaters write a line or two underway and fill in the details at anchor that evening.
Where a note ends up
You write it once and it appears in four places:
- on your live page, as a marker on the track, which anyone following you can open
- in the finished trip, on the position it belongs to
- in the notes panel and the journal
- as a caption in a timelapse, as the boat reaches that point
Editing the note updates it everywhere Saillogger displays that entry.
A note about a place belongs to that visit
Notes and photos you attach to a stop belong to that stay, not to the place itself. Come back to the same anchorage next year and you start with a clean entry: last year's note stays with last year's visit, where it makes sense, instead of resurfacing on top of the new one.
Adding photos
Three ways again:
- The camera on the live page, while underway, for a photo of where you are right now.
- The camera on any entry in the notes panel, to add a photo to a note you have already written.
- Add photo in the journal header, which attaches to where the boat is now.
Accepted files: .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .gif, .heic and .heif, up to 20 MB each. HEIC and HEIF are what an iPhone produces by default, so you do not have to convert anything.
If a photo is too big, Saillogger says: Photos must be 20 MB or smaller. Resize it, or send a smaller version from your phone's share sheet.
If a photo will not upload
- "Photos must be 20 MB or smaller." The file is too big. Most phones offer a smaller size when you share a photo; use that.
- The file is refused before it starts. Only
.jpg,.jpeg,.png,.gif,.heicand.heifare supported; videos and PDFs cannot be uploaded here. - The upload never finishes. Check the connection, reload the page, sign in if prompted and try once more. If the same supported file still fails, contact us with its format and approximate size.
The notes panel
The book icon on the live page opens the notes panel beside the map. It lists this cruise's entries, newest first. Each entry carries an anchor icon if it is a stay and a boat icon if it is a passage, the place, how long ago it was, the text and any photos.
Click an entry and the map flies to where it was written and opens its marker. That is the quickest way to answer "where were we when we saw that".
Every entry you own carries two small icons: a pencil to edit the text and a camera to add a photo to that entry. Each photo has a bin icon over it to remove it. Editing the text opens a box with Save, Cancel and Delete, so an entry you no longer want can go entirely.
The panel is the writing surface next to the boat. For reading, printing and sharing there is a full page, and the same notes and photos appear in both.
Your journal
The journal is the same collection of entries as a page of its own. Choose journal from the more menu in the top navigation (it opens in a new tab), or go straight to saillogger.com/monitor/journal/. The older address, /monitor/logbook/, still works and sends you here, so old bookmarks and links are safe.
Across the top:
- New entry, which writes a note at wherever the boat is now
- Add photo
- Map, back to the live page
- Share
Each entry shows an anchor icon for a stay or a boat icon for a passage, the place, the time (a finished stay shows a date range rather than a single moment), your text and your photos. Entries are grouped by month, so a long cruise reads in order without you counting dates.
As the owner you also get, on each entry, Edit this entry, Add a photo to this entry and, on each photo, Delete this photo. Everyone reading the journal, including visitors, gets Copy a link to this entry, so you can point someone straight at one anchorage rather than the whole cruise.
New entry in the header writes a note at wherever the boat is now, which is the journal's version of the pencil on the map. You do not have to be underway to use it.
Sharing the journal
Share uses the public address of your journal, https://saillogger.com/<your-boat>/journal, rather than the private address you are viewing. Visitors do not need a Saillogger account, but they must enter your access password if you set one.
The journal has no sharing switch of its own. It is published by the same switch as your live page: Live Tracking & Monitoring in the Sharing settings. If that is off, there is nothing public to share and the Share action does not appear.
Printing the journal
Print opens your browser's print dialog against a print layout, with the navigation and the on-screen controls stripped out. A desktop browser in landscape usually gives the best result. Printing to PDF works the same way and is a convenient way to keep a season.
This page was previously called the printable logbook; older links to it still open the journal.
A blank journal
If your journal shows its heading and nothing else, first check whether Initial Tracking Position is set.
This setting controls which trips appear; changing it does not delete notes or photos. Without a starting log, the journal, notes panel and track behind the boat have no selected range to display. Watch your boat live has the steps.
Saillogger normally sets this for you after your first trip, so a blank journal usually means a new account, or one where the setting was cleared.
If it still looks empty
- You set the starting log to a recent trip: choose an older one. Only trips at or after it are collected.
- You have logged no trips yet: notes need a track to attach to.
- You are looking at someone else's public journal: it shows only what its owner has written.
Notes show up in your timelapse
A note attached to a position becomes a caption in a timelapse as the boat reaches that point. Writing one underway places it at the current position; you can also add it retrospectively from a finished trip.
Notes stay attached to their positions and appear as captions in every timelapse that includes them. See Timelapse.