Over the years I have had a number of different notebooks, documents and spreadsheets for recording all sorts of various things boating related and I recently decided to collate them all together in to one super handy spreadsheet that you can use too!

I have left all the detail boxes blank so that you can fill in your own information, and the spreadsheet is fully editable so you can delete or add lines as you like. No one will have all the same gear or stuff on board, so I fully expect the spreadsheets to evolve and change over time.

So there are a few different worksheets on this spreadsheet and instead of putting all these notes and details on the actual spreadsheet, I thought I would give you a bit of a breakdown here and then hopefully you can work your way around it relatively easily.

If you don’t want to read all these words, simply scroll right down to the bottom and click on the blue link and voila! You will have a spreadsheet all of your own.

You can find all the different worksheets on tabs along the bottom of the spreadsheet. HOPEFULLY I have also set them all up so that they print nicely too.

The first line on each spreadsheet has got a title XXX Yacht …. Here in New Zealand we call anything that floats with a sail a ‘yacht’ – whether they are tiny sailing dinghies or super yachts. Some countries prefer to use “Sailing Vessel”. Anyway feel free to just delete that entire line and simply add in your boat name or whatever title you like.

Boat Maintenance

It is a bit frightening all the jobs that need to be regularly attended to on a boat, but I figure you are better to add more detail rather than less. Historically I have just had a notebook where I wrote down everything that we did on the boat each year, but this one is designed to be a bit more of a reminder. There are columns to add the parts required – so put the part number, measurements etc in here to make life easier than when you have to hunt around every year to figure out which parts you need.

Anyway feel free to add more stuff, delete lines, change the details around as required to suit your boat.

I have seen some really good spreadsheets with lines that turn red when things become overdue, but I haven’t got that sophisticated on this one. Feel free to add that in if you are more of an excel whiz than me!

Boat Details

Use this worksheet to detail all the pertinent information about the boat. In here you can add the make/model/design of each part on your boat, perhaps when and where it was purchased, the measurements of the sails, halyards, sizes of your blocks & winches etc. All super useful information to have close at hand when it comes to buying replacements.

Spare Parts

A place to record the inventory of the spares you carry on board, you can include the best place to purchase them from, contact details of the supplier, part numbers, price etc.

Personal Inventory

This is a good one to fill out for insurance purposes. If you ever have to make a claim then the insurance company will want to know what you own, where you got it, when you bought it and how much it cost. Far easier to do this before you go than after you lose it… and you can also get a much better feel for how much $ you need to insure your personal items for.

I have broken it down in to “hers and his” – as often you will have individual items of your own, just change hers & his to whatever your names are – no offense intended if you are an all girl boat or a solo sailor!

Passage Plan

This is my favorite worksheet so far. My passage plan was a boring word document before, but I think this is much better. There are some formulas in there to help you calculate how much fuel and water you’ll need vs how much you have on board and some other handy reminders for things that you should really research before you set off.

Once the plan is done you can send it off in an email to your loved ones or yacht club as a kind of Trip Report so if you don’t turn up when expected then the authorities will have a much better idea of where to start looking.

Click here to read more about passage planning

Passage Log

You can use this worksheet to log your trip as you sail along – recommended that you do an entry at least every hour and as well as any time something happens – i.e. you tack, or reach a waypoint, change a sail, etc.

Either enter it straight on to the worksheet or print it off to write on as you go.

Sight Log

For those of you who enjoy practising your Celestial Navigation.

You can read more about how to learn Celestial Navigation here.

Deviation Table

You should have a table on board your boat that details the deviation of your compass. Simply mark an X in the appropriate box and you should end up with a nice curve on your table.

Read more about deviation tables and how to make them here.

Personal Details

A handy template to store all your personal details, passport numbers, drivers license numbers, bank accounts, contact details and all that kind of thing. Once again it is much easier to do this before you lose your wallet…

Annual Spend

This is a month by month, itemized list of all your expenses. I have filled in a few lines as an example. There are formulas in the spreadsheet to give you an annual total at the bottom. This one starts in April in line with the NZ tax year, but you can change it around to suit your own requirements. Change the headings too and add/remove more columns to suit the things that you are wanting to account for.

Personally I am terrified of adding up everything I spend on my boat, but if you want to do it, then go for it, particularly if you are living on a limited income.

Read more about budgeting your boating here.

Income

With any luck you’ll also have some money coming in to your account, and you can record that on this worksheet.

Annual Budget

Once the year is over you can add your totals to this template where you can store all your annual tallies from the annual spend spreadsheet.

Power Budget

This spreadsheet isn’t quite finished yet, I need to add some more about power coming IN to the boat. But you can use it already to calculate what you use. Simply add in your power consumers on board, and work out what size batteries you need and what other sources of charge required – solar/wind/generator etc.

More info about budgeting your power consumption here.

Contact Details

Add the contact details of all the people you meet along your travels so you can keep in touch with them, be it locals or sailors. Put a separate line in for each individual person, then you will be able to sort by boat name or last name etc.

Planning Calendar

An annual calendar that will update every year – cool! They say that the best cruising plans are written on the sand, but you do need to plan for how long you can stay in a country, when the hurricane seasons start and finish, and that kind of thing.

Provisioning

My formulas aren’t quite right on here, but you can get the idea of how it all works to estimate how much food you are going to need on board to feed the number of people you have got on board.

Carolyn at the Boat Galley has also got one on her page.

Meal Plan

Start here to make a plan of all your meals for the week and then make your shopping list. Add in your regular favourites, I’ve put in a few examples, but I am sure you will have plenty more.

Some more handy tips for provisioning here.

First Aid

A checklist of all the recommended items to have in your First Aid kit – as per the Yachting New Zealand Category 1 Offshore regulations.

More info about what to have on board here.

SOP’s = Standard Operating Procedures

Some standard operating procedures – step by step handy guide/checklists of things to prepare in the event of an emergency, and other routine procedures. You might like to add things like pre-departure checks and packing up checks etc. Add your own extra lines to suit your requirements, and then print them off – perhaps leave them in the head for people to read and familiarise themselves so that in the event of something terrible happening you’ll have it fresh in your mind of what to do.

I’ve got another spreadsheet coming about emergency procedures, which will replace some of the stuff on this checklist. Sign up to the blog by clicking on the FOLLOW button to be informed when it comes out.

Rescue Me

This template contains important information for you to leave with someone you trust, with a step by step guide of what they should do and what information they need to provide to assist with your rescue.

Read more about why compiling this information is so important here.

Safety Diagram

Print off the boat shape and draw in the location of all your safety gear on board. You can also do an electrical plan, a plumbing plan etc.

You can read more about what’s involved here.

Saving the document

Once you have got the document saved to your computer and completed all your information, you might like to print it out so you have a hard copy handy. I also recommend you save it to your hard drive but also in the cloud somewhere – whether that is as simple as emailing a copy to yourself and then keeping the email, or saving it on Googledocs or your iCloud drive etc. Computers and salt water environments don’t get on well, so you don’t want to lose all your hard work.

Finally…!!

Anyway here is the template! Click on the blue link below. Save it to your computer and change it around to suit your own personal requirements.

Let me know what you think or if you have any other template ideas I can also add to this one.

Thanks!

Viki 🙂

Ultimate Boating Spreadsheet 2 Mar 18

PS Apparently the spreadsheet doesn’t open correctly in some browsers – so if it looks strange to you, perhaps open in a different browser. 🙂