What's new

Notable changes to the app and sites, newest first.

2026-09-09 — Crew Finder safety, freshness, listing preview, and log photos

Report, block, unmatch from any match; reports go to a person, and a matched reporter's safety report pauses the reported profile while it's reviewed. New Crew Finder safety guidance.
Freshness: profiles and listings drop out of the deck after 45 days without activity (or a boat underway / recently arrived); cards show "Active 3 d ago".
My listings gets Preview (exactly what crew see) and Edit; berth cards carry the skipper's tracked and self-reported miles.
Photos on log entries (1 per entry on Offshore, 5 on Bluewater). Add photos when you write an entry (online), or from the entry page afterwards; they appear alongside the notes.

Crew Finder miles are now "tracked", not "verified", and split in two. Crew-confirmed miles are passages where someone else on the boat recorded you aboard; own log miles are your own boat or a movement you recorded yourself. Self-reported miles stay separate and are never added in.
Only real tracks count. A passage contributes when it's Arrived and has a GPS track or satellite-tracker fixes inside its dates. Hand-typed distances and hand-typed positions don't count, and a track implying more than 25 knots is rejected.
You have to have been aboard. A crew record with a movement covering the passage dates (give or take a day) is what counts; joining a boat's crew today doesn't credit you with its history.
See the passages behind the number. Tap "Show passages" on a card. Before you match, other people see month and distance only; after a match, ports, dates and the boat.
Skippers can mark someone not aboard from the passage page for a leg they didn't sail; the person is emailed. You can't exclude someone you recorded aboard yourself.
Ocean crossings (500 nm or more, or 3+ nights) are counted separately.

New: Shore Chat. A WhatsApp-style thread between the boat and your shore contacts, with photos and a live track map. Shore contacts get a secure link in their brief emails and can read and reply without an account. Messages sync whenever the boat has signal. See Shore Chat.
New: Ideas / Roadmap. Post a feature idea, upvote the ones you want, comment on the details. Every idea shows its status from Open through Considering, Planned, Building and Shipped. The ideas with the most votes get built first.
New: Daily Duties. The Crew page's Duties tab is live: a weekly grid the captain edits, assigning each duty to a crew member.
Ship's Papers group by country, with a country filter, so the clearance pack for the place you're entering is one tap away.
Crew profiles have editable certifications and skills, and the Certs stat counts the certificate documents you've uploaded.
GPS trackers leave a breadcrumb trail. Polled fixes are kept for seven days, drawn as a dotted line under the logged track on the dashboard map, and a new log entry can prefill position, SOG and COG from the latest fix.
Maps are twice as tall, use an ocean basemap, and draw routes correctly across the dateline. Ports of refuge are capped at a 500 nm divert.
Fixes: crew members keep access to a vessel they've been accepted onto; pending crew invites are visible to the invitee; a route file (GPX) can be attached while editing a passage.

To-do tasks are editable after you create them.
Maintenance exports: to-dos, the service log and the buy list each download as CSV.
Once-daily shore brief. Any plan can pick a single daily slot (06:00, 12:00 or 18:00 UTC) for the brief instead of the full cadence.
Friendlier plan-limit messages on Add Vessel and onboarding; archived passages no longer count toward your plan's passage cap.

Shore contacts hear when she anchors, and when she moves again. Anchored and underway notices join the arrival notice; briefs never pause while you're at anchor. See Shore briefs and arrival notices.
Email your ship's papers to an agent or harbourmaster straight from the Papers page.
Weather and tides endpoints for the mobile app, which is in build.

New: Start here. Your first hour with WatchKeeper as one linear page — account and vessel through your first log entry, seven steps in order.
New: The runbook. The whole product by phase: shore setup, pre-departure, underway, landfall, back in port, and what to do when something is wrong. Save or print it before you head offshore.
New on watchkeeper.me: an About page telling the story behind Watchkeeper, and a Contact page with a form that lands in the same inbox as this site's.

Step-by-step walkthroughs across the Getting Started articles — account and vessel, shore crew, watch rotation, first passage, ship's blog, Skipper AI.
Search now reaches article body text, not just titles and headings, so natural phrasing finds the right page.

The on-device cache now holds 30 days, up from 24 hours. A two-week ocean passage no longer outlives what the app remembers.
Magic-link sign-in works across devices. Request the link on the sat phone, open it on the tablet.

Coastal now sends its entitled morning shore brief. Free tier, people ashore still hear from you daily.
The app and marketing site both link straight to this support site.

New: Past logbooks. Browse any completed passage, and search across every logbook you've ever written.
The history picker now shows arrived passages only — no more scrolling past the one you're standing in.
Skipper's Notes appear on the passage detail page.

New: this site. support.watchkeeper.me — a knowledge base built to load on a satellite link, with a human (not a chatbot) one click away.
Offshore Manual: the whole knowledge base as a single downloadable file.
Printable emergency card for the chart table.
Five month-one articles: Skipper AI and Provision AI, Ship's Blog and sharing, Log Book vs Ship's Log, Passage Mode, and the boat-systems tour.

Export your logbook to CSV, PDF, TXT or Markdown — per passage, or the whole fleet as a zip, archived passages included.
Editable start and finish coordinates on passages, with a distance stat that falls back to great-circle when the track is thin.
Bluewater dropped to $25/mo · $250/yr. Founding Members hold Bluewater at $199/year for life.
Welcome email when a paid subscription starts.
Sign-in simplified to email only — magic link or password. Google and Microsoft buttons removed; the same email address lands in the same account.
Terms of Use, Privacy Policy and Safety Disclaimer published.