A watchkeeping record maintained on the bridge detailing courses steered, speed, weather conditions, and watch handovers.
Quick facts
Regulation
SOLAS Chapter V
In practice
For a watchkeeping officer, the bridge log is the contemporaneous record of the watch. SOLAS Chapter V and flag state regulations require that voyage records are kept, and the bridge log fulfils this requirement. In the event of a navigational incident — a close-quarters situation, a grounding, or a collision — the bridge log provides the timeline of events, the positions of the vessel, the actions taken, and the communications made, all of which will be scrutinised by investigators.
Regulatory detail & full definition
The bridge log — distinct from the official deck log in some vessels' documentation systems — is a watchkeeping record maintained on the bridge detailing course, speed, position fixes, traffic observations, communications with port control and VTS, radar plot records, and any navigational incidents or events during the watch. On many vessels it serves as the primary contemporaneous bridge record from which the official log is compiled.
For a watchkeeping officer, the bridge log is the contemporaneous record of the watch. SOLAS Chapter V and flag state regulations require that voyage records are kept, and the bridge log fulfils this requirement. In the event of a navigational incident — a close-quarters situation, a grounding, or a collision — the bridge log provides the timeline of events, the positions of the vessel, the actions taken, and the communications made, all of which will be scrutinised by investigators.
Accurate and timely entries in the bridge log are a professional and legal obligation. Officers should record events as they happen, not retrospectively, and include enough detail to reconstruct the watch. When using ECDIS as the primary navigation system, track recording functions generate a digital record; however, this supplements rather than replaces a written log of significant decisions and communications. Both types of records may be requested during a port state control inspection or casualty investigation.