Offshore Manual

WatchKeeper accounts are email-based. There are no Google or Microsoft buttons — if you used one of those before mid-2026, request a magic link to the same email address and you'll land in the same account.

Create the account

1. Go to app.watchkeeper.me/login.
2. Pick one of the three ways in:
   • Magic link (default) — enter your email, we send a one-tap sign-in link. No password to remember.
   • Sign in with password — if you've already set one.
   • Create account — email + password, then a verification email, and a checkbox for the Terms, Privacy, and Safety notice.
3. Open the verification or magic-link email and tap the link. Check spam if it hasn't arrived in a couple of minutes.

Sign-in needs a working connection. Once you're in, the app keeps working offline — so sign in before you leave the dock, not after.

Set up your first vessel

Right after your first sign-in you'll be taken to vessel setup — the app needs a boat before anything else makes sense.

1. Enter the vessel name (the only required field).
2. Add call sign, MMSI, and home port if you have them — they appear on exports and ship's papers later, but you can fill them in any time.
3. Save. You'll land on the Dashboard with a welcome checklist pointing at the usual next steps: plan a passage, invite crew, add emergency contacts.

What plan am I on?

New accounts start on Coastal, which is free: 1 vessel, 4 crew seats, 1 active passage, your last 30 days of logs. See Plans and pricing for what Offshore and Bluewater add, or try Offshore free for 14 days.

If something goes sideways

• No verification email — check spam, then try the magic-link option; it uses the same address.
• "Used Google before" confusion — magic link to the same Gmail address reaches the same account and data.
• Still stuck? Write to us — include the email address you signed up with.

A Passage is the unit everything else hangs off: log entries, watch shifts, shore briefs, checklists, and the share link your family watches.

Create the passage

1. Go to Passages → New passage.
2. Enter the departure port and arrival port. You can attach coordinates to each if the port search doesn't know your anchorage.
3. Save. The passage starts as Planned.

The passage lifecycle

Status	What it means
Planned	On the books. You can build the pilotage plan, attach contacts, run pre-departure checklists.
Underway	You've left. Log entries accumulate, watch shifts run, shore briefs go out on schedule.
Arrived	Done. An arrival notice is emailed to your shore contacts automatically the moment you flip to Arrived.

Change status from the passage page. On the free Coastal plan you can have 1 active (Planned or Underway) passage and keep 3 completed ones — see Plans and pricing.

Before you go

• AI Pilotage Plan — on the passage page, "View Plan" builds a nine-section plan you can edit ("Skipper's Notes") and email to your contacts as a float plan.
• Emergency contacts — attach the people who should get shore briefs and the arrival notice. One shore contact per brief on Coastal; unlimited on paid plans.
• Procedures — run your pre-departure checklist and "Save to log" so it's on the record.

Post your first log entry

1. Once underway, go to Log Book → New entry (or the "Post log" button in the dashboard header).
2. Position, speed, wind, sea state, sails, engine — fill what you have; everything is optional except the time.
3. Save. Entries post fine with no signal — they queue on the device and sync when you're back in coverage. See Logging offline.

Common first-passage questions

• Do I need to log hourly? No — log at whatever rhythm suits your watch system. Hourly is tradition, not a requirement.
• Wrong port or typo? Passages are editable — passage page → Edit.
• Practice passage? Create one, play, then mark it Cancelled — cancelled passages don't count against your caps.

WatchKeeper has two log pages with confusingly similar names. Thirty seconds here saves you hunting later.

Log Book — where you write

The Log Book is the traditional hourly log for the passage that's underway: position, speed, wind, sea state, sails, engine RPM, and a notes field. This is where "post a log entry" happens — from the Log Book page or the Post log button in the dashboard header.

Entries post fine offline and queue until you have signal — see Logging offline.

Ship's Log — where everything reads back

The Ship's Log is a read-only merged timeline of everything recorded aboard: Log Book entries alongside the VHF Radio Log, Fish Log, service log, and Incidents & Safety entries, in time order. Filter pills narrow it to one source, and the Safety lens pulls out the entries that matter in a review or an insurance conversation.

You never write into the Ship's Log directly — it re-displays what the individual logs recorded.

Rule of thumb

• Recording something? Go to the specific log it belongs to: Log Book for the hourly entry, VHF for radio traffic, Fish Log for the mahi, Incidents for the thing you'd rather not have logged.
• Looking something up? Start at the Ship's Log — one timeline, everything, filterable.

The other logs at a glance

Log	What goes in it
Log Book	Hourly passage entries — position, conditions, sails, engine
VHF Radio Log	Calls, watches kept, radio tests
Fish Log	Species, weight, method, angler, photos
Incidents & Safety	Incidents, drills, safety briefings
Service log (Maintenance)	Work done on the boat, with next-due reminders

All of them feed the Ship's Log timeline.

A tracker dot says where the boat is. It says nothing about how she's doing, what the weather did, or that you're fine and eating noodles. The Shore Brief fills that gap: twice a day WatchKeeper reads the log, the position, and the weather, and writes your people at home a calm, readable update. No app for them to install, no jargon, no drama.

Add a contact

1. Go to Contacts → Add contact.
2. Enter their name and email, and tick Receives shore briefs. Family, buddy boats, the dockmaster who worries — anyone who should hear from the boat.
3. Mark one contact Primary — that's who search-and-rescue paperwork points at, and who the arrival notice leads with.

Put them on a passage

1. On the contact card, choose the passage they should follow.
2. That's the whole subscription. Briefs for that passage now include them.

On the free Coastal plan one shore contact receives each brief; paid plans lift the cap — see Plans and pricing.

What they'll get

Briefs go out twice daily on schedule while the passage is Underway. The Shore Updates page shows the schedule, the recipients, and every brief already sent, so you can read exactly what your people read. When you flip the passage to Arrived, an arrival notice goes out automatically — details in Shore briefs and arrival notices.

Send your float plan before you slip lines

1. Make sure your emergency contacts are entered, with one marked Primary.
2. On any passage plan, Submit to shore contacts emails your float plan — route, timing, vessel details, and who to call — to your people before you leave.

A float plan in inboxes ashore beats one on the chart table. Do it as part of your pre-departure routine — see Plan your first passage.

The crew pages answer the only question that matters at 0300: whose problem is this. A roster that knows whose passport is missing, watch teams you can see at a glance, and a rotation nobody has to argue about.

Add your crew

1. Go to Crew → Add crew.
2. Name and role are required. Add an invite email and they get their own login to the vessel — see Crew seats, roles, and invites for what each role can do.
3. The roster tracks the boring critical things: safety briefings, documents, and who is actually aboard right now.

The free Coastal plan includes 4 crew seats per vessel; see Plans and pricing.

Pick a watch system

1. On the Crew page, choose a watch system: 6 and 6, 4 and 4, Swedish, traditional dog watches, or roll your own.
2. Watch teams are created automatically for the system you pick.

Build the rotation

1. Drag crew into their teams.
2. The 24-hour bar shows who has the deck, every hour, in boat time or UTC. Handover times stop being a debate.

Watch shifts run against the active passage while it's Underway, so the rotation, the log, and the shore briefs all agree on who had the deck when.

Every boat carries her documentation, and nobody can find anything in it at 0300. Skipper AI fixes that: feed it your manuals and it answers from them, citing the manual name and page number so you can check its work. With no manuals uploaded it still knows seamanship, COLREGs, weather, and first aid cold.

Add a manual

1. Go to Skipper AI, then Add in the Manual library.
2. Upload the PDF. Files straight from the manufacturer's site work fine.
3. Give it a minute to index — after that it's part of every answer.

Ask

1. Type the question the way you'd ask a rigger: "what impeller does the watermaker take" beats formal search terms.
2. Answers come back with citations to your manuals, page numbers included.
3. Leave Passage context on and it folds in your current passage — position, conditions, what's in the log — when the question calls for it.

What plan it needs

Straight talk: Skipper AI is an Offshore feature. Every new account gets the 14-day Offshore trial free, no card, so it's yours to try right now — see Plans and pricing.

More on how Skipper AI and Provision AI work (and their daily limits) in Skipper AI and Provision AI.

The logbook is for the boat. The blog is for everyone who keeps asking how the trip is going. Your voyage gets one public address, your writing plus your photos, with the passage data already there when you want it.

Name it

1. Go to Ship's Blog and enter a title, an address, and a tagline.
2. Your blog lives at watchkeeper.me/boats/your-boat — one link to give the whole marina.

Pick a look

1. Choose from ten templates, from Classic warm paper to Night Watch to The Broadsheet.
2. One click to switch, any time — posts carry over, nothing is lost.

Create and write

1. Create the blog, then New post.
2. Posts are plain writing plus your photos. Positions, distances, and passage stats are already in the app when you want to pull them in.
3. Publish when ready. Who can see what, and how sharing works, is covered in Ship's Blog and sharing.

If you want to see what a ship's story can look like when the log does the remembering, the founder keeps one at svcloudnine.cloud — the same circumnavigation WatchKeeper is being built on.

WatchKeeper is built for boats that spend days out of coverage. Short version: keep logging normally — the app queues everything and syncs itself when signal returns. Here's the precise version.

Works with no signal at all

On a phone, tablet, or laptop where the app has loaded before:

• Opening the app — the app shell is stored on the device.
• Reading your data — everything you've loaded stays readable for 30 days from the last time it synced, and that survives reloads, browser restarts, and device reboots. Open the app before you lose signal and any realistic passage is covered.
• Posting to the log — these forms write to a persistent on-device queue and survive a reload or restart:
  • Log Book entries (position, conditions, sails, engine)
  • Fish Log
  • VHF Radio Log
  • Incidents & Safety entries
  • Pilotage-plan "Skipper's Notes"
  • Watch shift start/end (the dashboard crew chips)
• Ticking Procedures checklists — ticks live on the device per vessel.

One naming note: the Log Book (where you post entries) and the Ship's Log (the read-only merged timeline of VHF, fish, service, and incident entries) are different pages. Everything above applies to the entry forms — the Ship's Log timeline simply re-displays what those forms recorded.

Each queued write carries its own idempotency ID, so a flaky satellite link that drops mid-sync cannot create duplicate entries — retrying is always safe.

Queues, but with a caveat

Actions outside the list above (say, editing a vessel profile while offline) also retry when the connection returns — but only if you keep the page open. They don't survive a reload while offline. When in doubt offshore, stick to the log forms above; that's what they're hardened for.

Needs a live connection

• First sign-in on a device — so sign in before you lose the dock Wi-Fi, and don't sign out mid-passage.
• Anything AI: shore-brief generation, Skipper AI, Provision meal plans.
• Weather, tides, AIS traffic, tracker position polls.
• Photo uploads, crew invite emails, billing, exports.

Shore briefs are generated and sent from the server on schedule, so your shore crew still gets them while you're offline — they'll just reflect the last data that synced.

Check the queue

Settings → Pending writes shows everything still waiting to sync, with attempt counts and any errors. The footer chip also shows a pending count whenever you're offline.

• Retry all — force a sync attempt (useful the moment signal returns).
• Remove — discard a queued write you no longer want.

A write that the server rejected (validation problem, plan limit) is not queued — it fails immediately with a message, so you can fix it while the details are fresh.

Before you head out — the 2-minute drill

1. Sign in on every device you'll log from.
2. Open the pages you'll want offshore (dashboard, logbook, procedures) once, so they're cached — the cache holds for 30 days.
3. Download the Offshore Manual and print the emergency card.

Your position on the dashboard map, the passage page, and the public share link can come from three sources, used together or alone.

1. Log entries (all plans)

Every Log Book entry can carry a position. If that's your only source, your track updates as often as you log — completely offline-friendly, since queued entries sync with the rest of the log.

2. A satellite tracker (Offshore and Bluewater)

If you run a tracker, WatchKeeper polls it about every 10 minutes and folds positions into your track automatically:

1. Go to your Vessel → Edit and add the tracker.
2. Supported: PredictWind, YB, and Garmin inReach MapShare (paste your MapShare URL).
3. Positions appear on the dashboard live map and the passage page without you logging anything.

Garmin inReach support follows Garmin's published feed format but has seen less real-world traffic than the others — if yours misbehaves, tell us and include the MapShare URL; it's the fastest kind of bug for us to fix.

3. A GPX file (per passage)

On the passage page you can upload a GPX of your planned route or your recorded track (replace or remove it any time). With a route loaded, the passage page shows a route deviation card:

Deviation	Reading
under 1 nm	on route
1–5 nm	drifting off — worth a look
over 5 nm	well off the loaded route

Note: GPX is upload-only today. Exports come as CSV, PDF, TXT, or Markdown — see Export your logbook.

What your shore crew sees

The public passage share link shows the latest synced position and when it arrived. If you're offline, it shows the last known fix with its age — honest, rather than pretending to be live.

Both AI features are on the Offshore and Bluewater plans, and both need a live connection — the AI runs on the server, not on your device. Offline, the pages are readable but new questions and plans wait for signal.

Skipper AI — chat with your boat's manuals

Skipper answers questions grounded in the manuals you've given it — not generic internet boating advice.

1. Go to Skipper and build the manual library: upload PDFs (they're read in your browser before upload) or paste text — engine manual, watermaker, autopilot, whatever lives in the wet locker.
2. Ask in plain language: "what's the winterizing procedure for the watermaker?"
3. Answers cite the manual passages they came from, and Skipper knows your live passage context.
4. Conversations persist — collapse answers, archive a conversation when it's done.

What Skipper can't do

• It only knows what you've uploaded. No manual in the library = no grounded answer. If it's guessing beyond your documents, the citations will be thin — that's your signal.
• It can be wrong. For anything safety-critical — fuel, gas, rigging, through-hulls — read the cited passage in the actual manual before acting. The citation is there precisely so you can check.
• It can't see your engine, your wiring, or your boat — only the documents and your logged data.

Provision AI — tanks, food, and the meal plan

The Provision page tracks tanks (Water / Fuel / Propane) and food inventory by category, then puts AI on top:

• AI Meal Plan — generate a plan from what's actually aboard; regenerate until it looks right, then approve it.
• Expiring Soon — what to eat first.
• Reprovision list — what's run low, feeding the Buy List in Maintenance.

Same honesty applies: the plan is only as good as the inventory you've kept current. Garbage in, gourmet out is not a feature we ship.

If an AI answer is wrong

Tell us — include the question you asked and what it answered. AI answers that miss are exactly the feedback that improves the feature, and if a manual isn't being read correctly we want the PDF that broke it.

Passage Mode is how WatchKeeper knows what the boat is doing right now — and it's where your engine hours and fuel picture come from without you keeping a separate tally.

The four modes

Mode	When
Sailing	Canvas only
Motorsailing	Sails up, engine assisting
Motoring	Engine only
Anchored	On the hook (or alongside)

Set the mode from the Passage Mode page or the dashboard card whenever it changes; add engine RPM when the engine's turning. Log Book entries also carry mode and RPM, so your hourly log and the mode timeline reinforce each other.

What you get for the discipline

• Engine hours, derived — time spent in Motoring/Motorsailing accumulates automatically; the page shows total hours and the current session. This is the number your service reminders key off.
• Fuel picture — paired with your Fuel tank readings (Settings → Tanks), so consumption has context.
• Time-per-mode breakdown — how much of the passage was actually sailed vs motored. Useful for the log, the blog post, and the fuel budget for next time.

Practical notes

• Switch modes when it happens, not at watch change. The breakdown is only as honest as the timestamps.
• Forgot for three hours? Switch now — and note it in the Log Book entry. Precision beats false precision.
• Prefer to be certain offline? Mode changes made offline retry while the page stays open, but the bulletproof offline path is a Log Book entry (which carries mode + RPM and queues on the device) — see Logging offline.

Shore Chat is a message thread between the boat and the people ashore, in the app under Shore Crew → Messages. It looks like a chat app because that is what your family already knows how to use.

Who is in the thread

Every shore contact on the vessel who receives briefs. They don't need a WatchKeeper account: each shore brief email carries a personal, secure link to the thread ("Message the boat"). Anyone with the link can read the thread and reply.

Crew aboard see the thread in the app.

What you can send

• Text, with @mentions. Mentioning a shore contact emails them a nudge with your message.
• Photos, from the camera or the roll. The upload shows a progress bar and can be retried if the signal drops.

Shore contacts see the boat's live track map above the thread, so "where are you" answers itself.

Offline

Write messages any time. They queue on the device and send the next time the boat has signal, the same way log entries do. A message that fails shows a retry button rather than vanishing.

Names

Shore contacts appear under the name you gave them in Contacts, verbatim. If a contact has a two-word given name (say, "Mary Anne"), it stays that way in the thread and in mentions.

Turning it off

There is no per-contact switch yet. Removing someone from the passage's brief recipients also removes their access to the thread link going forward. See Set up your shore crew.

If you are in danger, contact local police or coast guard first. Then tell us: safety@watchkeeper.me.

Crew Finder connects sailors and boats. Everyone on it is 18 or over. Watchkeeper is not a party to any crew arrangement you make; the arrangement is between you and the other person, at your own risk.

What we check, and what we don't

• Tracked miles come from arrived passages with a GPS track or tracker fixes, on boats where you're accepted crew and someone marked you aboard. They show experience at sea. They are not a measure of competence, character or safety.
• ID verified (coming soon) means a government ID was checked by Stripe. It is not a background check and says nothing about how someone behaves aboard.
• Self-reported miles are typed in by the person and not checked.
• We do not vet, screen or endorse any boat, skipper or crew member.

Money

The norm for crew is sharing actual voyage costs: food, fuel, marina fees, split fairly. Never pay a passage fee or a capital contribution, and never pay before you board. Anyone asking for money up front, or asking you to send money off the platform, is a reason to walk away and report.

Before you board

• Video call first. Ask the questions you'd ask any employer or flatmate.
• Ask for contactable references: previous crew, a marina, a club.
• Share the boat name, the skipper's name and their ID status with someone ashore, and agree when you'll check in.
• See the boat. Check safety gear, liferaft dates, comms. If something feels wrong, it is.
• Never surrender your passport. A skipper may need to see it for clearance; you keep it.
• Keep conversations in the Crew Finder chat until you've met. It's the record we can act on.

Report, block, unmatch

From any match: Unmatch closes the chat for both of you, quietly. Block means you never see each other again; the other person is not told. Report sends what happened to a person on the Watchkeeper team. A person reads every report, usually within a few days. You'll get an email when it's been reviewed; we won't tell you what we did about someone else, and we never tell them who reported.

If someone you matched with reports feeling unsafe, the reported account's Crew Finder profile and listings are paused while we review. The rest of Watchkeeper keeps working. A substantiated report of assault or serious harassment means a permanent ban from Crew Finder.

What we keep

Reports, the chat around them and related records are kept for three years after the report, even if an account is deleted, so we can respond to a lawful request from police or a court. Everything else follows the normal account deletion. Your data export includes reports you filed, not reports about you.

More help

• ISWAN Seafarers' Help — 24-hour, free, confidential.
• Sailing Safely for Women — guidance, resources and community.
• safety@watchkeeper.me — reaches a person, not a bot.

Shore briefs are the calm, AI-written passage updates WatchKeeper emails to the people ashore who worry about you. They're generated on the server, so they keep going out even while you're offline — built from whatever data last synced.

The schedule

All times UTC, while a passage is Underway:

Plan	Scheduled briefs per day
Coastal	1 (06:00)
Offshore	2 (06:00 and 18:00)
Bluewater	3 (06:00, 12:00, 18:00) + on-demand from the passage page

Every plan gets the morning brief — Coastal sends it to 1 shore contact; paid plans are unlimited. Any plan can also switch to a once-daily brief and pick the slot (06:00, 12:00 or 18:00 UTC) from vessel settings. Everyone also gets the arrival and anchor notices (below), and you can share the live passage link with anyone.

The Shore Updates page in the app shows your cadence, the countdown to the next brief, recipients, and the full history of what was sent.

Who receives them

Recipients are the passage's emergency contacts marked to receive briefs:

1. Add people to your vessel's Contacts (or use "Add to passage" from the address book).
2. On the passage, tick who gets briefs. Coastal sends to 1 shore contact; Offshore and Bluewater are unlimited.
3. Every brief includes an unsubscribe link — a worried-but-busy in-law can opt out without you doing anything.

On Bluewater, shore crew can also get SMS alerts.

The arrival notice

The moment you flip the passage to Arrived, a one-shot arrival notice is emailed to your shore contacts automatically. You don't have to remember anything at the dock — it's fired by the status change itself (at most once per day, in case you toggle by accident).

Anchor notices

When a log entry marks the boat anchored, shore contacts get a short "she's anchored" email with the position. When the next entry has her underway again, they get a "she's moving" note. Briefs keep going out while you're at anchor, so nobody ashore is left guessing.

Shore Chat

Since September 2026 the brief emails also carry a secure link to Shore Chat, a message thread between the boat and your shore contacts with photos and the live track. Shore contacts read and reply without an account. See Shore Chat.

The float plan is separate

Before departure, you can email the AI Pilotage Plan to selected contacts from the passage page ("Email the passage plan"). That's a pre-departure float plan; shore briefs are the en-route updates. Contacts receive it as a revocable link, not a stale attachment.

If briefs aren't arriving

1. Is the passage actually Underway? Planned passages don't brief.
2. Check the recipient is ticked to receive briefs on this passage (not just in the address book).
3. Ask them to check spam for mail from watchkeeper.me, and to allowlist it.
4. Check status — if brief generation has an incident, it'll be listed.
5. Still off? Contact us with the passage ID (it's in the passage page URL).

Your logbook is yours. Every export below works on every plan, including free — and if you ever cancel, we'll point you here first so nothing is left behind.

Export one passage

On any passage page, the export buttons produce:

• CSV — for spreadsheets and your own analysis
• PDF — a formatted logbook for insurers, surveyors, or the shelf
• TXT — plain text, smallest possible file
• Markdown — for blogs, wikis, or your own notes system

Export everything at once

From the logbook screen you can pull a ZIP archive of every passage — including completed and archived ones — in any or all of the formats above. This is the right tool before cancelling, before a long refit, or just as an annual backup.

The fine print on Coastal

The free plan shows (and exports) your last 30 days of log history. Completed passages beyond your cap stay stored — nothing is ever deleted — but exporting the deep history needs a paid plan, which you can hold for a single month if all you want is one big archive.

Full account export (GDPR)

Settings → Privacy → Export my data produces a JSON file of everything on your account — every entity, not just logs. It's machine-readable rather than pretty; use the logbook exports for anything human-facing.

What about GPX?

GPX is currently upload-only (for routes and recorded tracks on a passage). There's no GPX export yet — if you need one for your chartplotter workflow, tell us; demand is how features get prioritized.

Two features show your voyage to people outside the crew: the Ship's Blog and passage share links. Both are opt-in, and both are under your control. Here's exactly who sees what.

The short version

Nothing is public unless you publish it. No blog exists until you create one; no share link exists until you make one; your logbook, crew list, and live position are never public by default.

Ship's Blog

The blog is a public website for your boat at /boats/your-address — you pick the address (it starts from the boat name, and you can change it).

• Only PUBLISHED posts are visible. Drafts are yours alone until you hit publish.
• Position is a snapshot, not a feed. When you publish a post, it captures that moment's position, passage label, and day number — permanently, even if your logbook changes later. The blog never shows where you are now, only where you were when you posted.
• Each post carries your words and up to a handful of photos; the blog page shows your title, tagline, template, and logo — nothing else from your account.
• Post in port about where you were, not underway about where you are, if boat security is on your mind. A three-day delay on posts costs nothing and tells nobody your current anchorage.

To take something down: unpublish the post (back to draft) and it's gone from the public page.

Passage share links

A share link is a private URL for a specific passage — made for shore crew, not the public. Anyone with the link sees the passage's track, latest synced position (with its age), and status. Control them from the passage page:

• Revoke any link at any time — it dies immediately.
• Links can carry an expiry date — good for a delivery where the owner needs eyes for two weeks, not forever.
• Make separate links for separate people; revoking the surveyor's doesn't cut off your family.
• The float plan email sends the pilotage plan as a revocable link too — not an attachment that lives forever in someone's inbox.

What is never public

Your logbook entries, crew names, contacts, maintenance records, stowage, papers, billing — none of it has a public surface. Shore-brief emails go only to the recipients you ticked, and every brief carries an unsubscribe link.

The privacy checklist before a passage

1. Blog: happy with the address and what's published?
2. Share links: right people, expiry set where it makes sense?
3. Brief recipients: current list, nobody stale?

Three minutes, done. Questions about a specific exposure? Ask — privacy questions jump the queue in spirit if not in code.

Crew belong to a vessel, not to a passage — invite someone once and they're aboard for every passage that boat makes until they leave.

How many seats?

Crew seats are covered by the owner's plan — your crew never pay:

Plan	Crew seats per vessel
Coastal	4
Offshore	4
Bluewater	12

Invite someone

1. Go to Crew → Add crew and enter their name, role, and email.
2. They get an invite email with a link.
3. They tap it, sign in (or create a free account — magic link is easiest), and Accept.
4. They land on your vessel with access to its passages and logs.

Invite not arriving or gone stale? Pending invites have a resend button on the Roster tab. The invitee should also check spam for mail from watchkeeper.me.

Crew invites need a connection to send — do the inviting before you sail, not from mid-ocean.

Roles

Vessels start with two roles: Captain and Crew. Roles are labels for the roster, watch schedule, and documents — the vessel owner's account is what controls billing and vessel settings.

The Crew page's six tabs

• Roster — everyone aboard or invited, with roles and contact details.
• Watch — watch teams and the rotation; shifts show up as tappable chips on the dashboard, and starting/ending a shift works offline.
• Movements — who joined or left the boat and when; this is what drives Souls Aboard.
• Documents — passports, visas, certificates, with the country-visit visa clock on Ship's Papers. Each crew profile also has editable certifications and skills lists.
• Daily Duties — a weekly grid of duties (galley, deck check, log review, whatever you define). The captain assigns each cell to a crew member; unassigned cells stay blank.
• Safety — drills, safety equipment, the Mayday card and the crew briefing, shared with Incidents & Safety.

What "Souls Aboard" means

The dashboard tile counts people whose movement status says they're aboard right now — it's the number you'd report to a rescue coordinator, which is why it lives front and center. Keep Movements honest and the number stays honest.

Someone leaving the boat?

Record their departure in Movements (Souls Aboard updates immediately), and remove them from the Roster if they shouldn't see the vessel at all anymore.

Everything in WatchKeeper hangs off a vessel: passages, crew, contacts, maintenance, stowage, sails, tanks. Your account owns vessels; your plan caps how many.

Vessel limits

Plan	Vessels you can own
Coastal	1
Offshore	2
Bluewater	5

Being crew on someone else's vessel doesn't count against your limit — a delivery skipper on the free plan can be crew on any number of boats; the cap is only on vessels you own.

Add and switch vessels

1. Vessels → New vessel to add another boat (name required; call sign, MMSI, home port optional).
2. The vessel picker in the app switches your active boat — the dashboard, logbook, and every other page follow it.

What moves with you, what doesn't

Vessel-scoped (does not follow you between boats): crew roster, contacts/address book, maintenance history, stowage, sail inventory, tank setup, procedures ticks.

Account-scoped: your profile, plan, and billing; the vessels you own; your crew memberships on other people's boats.

There's no bulk copy between vessels today — a new boat starts clean. If you're migrating from a boat you're selling, export its logbook first; the record belongs with you even if the hull doesn't.

Selling or retiring a boat?

Export everything first, then delete the vessel from its settings page. Deleting a vessel is permanent and takes its passages and logs with it — the export is your copy.

Beyond passages and logs, six pages hold the boat: what's aboard, where it lives, what's due, and what's in the filing cabinet. Each is simple; together they compound.

Maintenance

Six tabs: To-Do, Service Log (work done, with next-due reminders by date or engine hours — which is why Passage Mode discipline pays), Tools, Parts, Consumables, and the Buy List — which builds itself from anything marked low. Walk into the chandlery with the Buy List open and stop buying a third set of impellers you already own.

Stowage

Where everything lives: Zones → Locations → Items. Ten months from now, "spare raw-water impeller" → port lazarette, blue box in five seconds, at anchor, offline (if you've opened the page since your last sync).

Sails

The Sail Inventory (type, area, reefing points, condition, hours — "Log hours" after a passage) and the Sail Plan Matrix: wind band × point of sail → which sail, which reef. Fill the matrix on a calm day; consult it at 0300 when the wind's building and nobody's thinking clearly.

Procedures

Checklists — Daily, Periodical, Emergency, and templates. Ticks live on the device (fully offline) per vessel; Save to log records a completed run into the passage record, which is what makes "we did the pre-departure checks" provable rather than remembered. Reset clears the ticks for next time.

Tanks

Settings → Tanks: define Fuel and Water tanks, then log readings. Feeds the fuel picture on Passage Mode and the gauges on Provision.

Ship's Papers

Registration, insurance, radio licence, clearance documents (zarpes, permits), and country visits with the visa clock — the thing that knows your 90 days run out before you do.

How they connect

Engine hours (Passage Mode) → service due (Maintenance) → part needed (Parts) → Buy List → fitted and logged (Service Log) → and the whole trail shows up in the Ship's Log timeline. Start with whichever page hurts most today; the connections arrive on their own.

The number on a Crew Finder card comes from WatchKeeper logbooks, not from anything the sailor typed. Here is exactly what counts.

What a passage needs

1. It is marked Arrived, not archived, with a departure and arrival time.
2. It has a GPS track (a GPX file attached to the passage) or tracker fixes (a Garmin or Iridium device polled by WatchKeeper) inside its dates. Hand-typed log positions and hand-typed distances don't count. A track that implies more than 25 knots between two fixes is rejected as implausible.
3. You were aboard. One of:
   • you own the boat;
   • you're accepted crew and a movement (Crew → Movements) covers the passage dates, give or take a day;
   • you're accepted crew with no movements recorded at all, and you joined before the passage departed.
4. The owner hasn't marked you not aboard for that passage.

Crew-confirmed vs own log

• Crew-confirmed: someone else vouched for you. The boat's owner (or captain) recorded your movement, or you're the owner and a crew member's movement confirms the passage.
• Own log: your own boat with no crew confirmation, or a movement you recorded yourself, or a plain crew record with no movements.

Both are real logbook miles. The split exists because a boat owner could attach any track to their own passage; a second person on the roster is what makes it hard to fake.

Self-reported miles (typed into your profile) are shown separately, in grey, and are never added to either number.

Offshore, coastal, crossings

Passages of 100 nm or more count as offshore; shorter ones as coastal. A passage of 500 nm or more, or three nights or more, is also counted as an ocean crossing.

Who sees what

Before a match, other sailors see the totals and, if they tap "Show passages", the month and distance of each passage. After a match, both sides can see ports, dates and the boat's name. Positions and log notes are never shown.

A passage is missing

Check, in order: is it Arrived? Does it have a track or tracker fixes (Passage → Route file, or a tracker on the vessel)? Are you on that boat's crew with an accepted invite? Is there a movement covering the dates? Has the owner marked you not aboard (you'd have had an email)? Miles refresh within about 15 minutes of a change; a nightly sweep catches passages whose tracker data arrived late.

For skippers: marking someone not aboard

On an Arrived passage's page, "Crew on this passage" lists everyone the passage counts for. Use Not aboard for a roster member who didn't sail that leg; they'll get an email. You can't exclude someone whose movement you recorded yourself. Mark aboard reverses it.

Preview. Tracked miles are rolling out to a small group of accounts first. If your profile still shows a single "verified sea miles" number, you're on the previous calculation; nothing on your card has changed.

Staying visible

Profiles and berth listings only show in the deck while the person behind them is active: they've used Watchkeeper in the last 45 days, their boat is underway or arrived recently, or (boats) the listing's departure window is still ahead. Nothing is deleted; opening the app brings you straight back. Cards show "Active today / 3 d ago / 2 w ago" so you know who'll answer.

Report, block, unmatch

From any match you can Unmatch (closes the chat for both, quietly), Block (they never see you again, and you never see them; nobody is told), or Report. A person reads every report, usually within a few days. If someone you matched with reports feeling unsafe with you, your Crew Finder profile is paused while it's reviewed; the rest of Watchkeeper keeps working. Listings that specify a gender are held for review before going live.

Three plans, named for how far you sail. Upgrading is instant; nothing is ever deleted when you downgrade.

The plans

	Coastal (free)	Offshore	Bluewater
Price	$0	$14/mo or $140/yr	$25/mo or $250/yr
Free trial	—	14 days	—
Vessels owned	1	2	5
Crew seats per vessel	4	4	12
Active passages	1	Unlimited	Unlimited
Completed passages kept	3	Unlimited	Unlimited
Log history visible	30 days	All-time	All-time
Scheduled AI shore briefs	1/day	2/day	3/day + on-demand
Shore contacts per brief	1	Unlimited	Unlimited
Tracker integration (PredictWind / YB / Garmin)	—	✓	✓
Skipper AI + Provision AI	—	✓	✓
SMS alerts to shore crew	—	—	✓
Live AIS nearby traffic	—	—	✓
Weather routing	—	—	✓
Read-only public API	—	—	✓
Priority support	—	—	✓

Prices are in USD; tax is calculated at checkout from your billing address.

The Founding Member deal

$199/year, limited to the first 100 members. Founding Members get full Bluewater limits and the price is grandfathered for life — it never steps up to standard pricing while you stay subscribed. When the 100 seats are gone, they're gone.

How limits behave

• Hitting a cap shows a clear message with the limit and an upgrade path — the app never silently drops data.
• Downgrading never deletes anything. Resources over the new plan's cap go read-only until you're back under it (or upgrade again).
• Crew never pay: seats ride on the vessel owner's plan.

Trying before buying

Offshore has a 14-day free trial — cancel before it ends and you're not charged. There's no trial on Bluewater; a single month at $25 is the practical equivalent.

Upgrade or downgrade

Settings → Subscription & billing → Manage subscription opens the billing portal, where plan changes, payment methods, and invoices live. See Manage or cancel your subscription.

All billing self-service lives in one place, and cancelling takes about four clicks. No chat with a "retention specialist," no guilt screens.

The billing portal

1. In the app: Settings → Subscription & billing → Manage subscription.
2. The portal (run by Stripe, our payment processor) handles:
   • Switching plans or monthly ↔ annual
   • Payment method updates
   • Invoices and receipts — download any past invoice
   • Cancelling

Before you cancel: take your logbook

Your data is yours. Export your logbook — one ZIP gets every passage in CSV, PDF, TXT, and Markdown, and Settings → Privacy has the full JSON export. Do it while your plan still shows your full history (the free plan's view is 30 days).

What cancelling actually does

• Your plan runs to the end of the period you've paid for, then drops to the free Coastal plan.
• Nothing is deleted. Passages, logs, and crew stay stored; anything over Coastal's caps goes read-only.
• Come back any time — upgrade again and it all lights back up.

Refunds

Annual plans: within 30 days of payment, we refund the unused portion, prorated. Monthly plans cancel at the period end (no partial-month refunds). Something billed wrong? Write to us with the invoice number — billing mistakes get fixed, not argued about.

Failed payments

If a charge fails you'll see a banner in the app with a link to update your card; we retry a few times before anything changes on your plan. Your logs are never held hostage over a card hiccup.

Deleting the account entirely

Settings → Delete account removes the account and its data permanently. Export first — deletion is not reversible, and support can't resurrect it after the fact.

On a boat, "the app is down" is usually "the link is down" — and the app is built to keep working through exactly that. Run this before anything else.

The 60-second triage

1. Check our status, cheaply. Fetch support.watchkeeper.me/status.txt — it's a few hundred bytes of plain text and loads on the worst link you own. If it reports an incident, it's us; the incident note will say what's affected.
2. Check the footer chip. If the app shows the offline indicator, it knows it's offline — everything you post is queueing normally. That's not a fault; see Logging offline.
3. Try another site (a fast one — example.com). If nothing loads, it's the link. Satellite terminals sulk: power-cycle the terminal, check for obstructions, wait out the rain cell.
4. Check Settings → Pending writes. Queued entries with rising attempt counts but no errors = the link is flapping; they'll clear when it steadies. Entries with a red error = read the error; a validation or plan-limit message means the server answered — your connection is fine.

Reading the symptoms

Symptom	Most likely	Do this
Pages load but data is stale	You're offline; cache is serving	Nothing — it syncs when the link returns
Log entry "saved" but not on other devices	Entry is queued locally	Pending writes → Retry all when online
Everything spins, nothing errors	Link is up but terrible (high loss)	Wait or retry near the terminal; queued writes are safe
Clear error message on save	Server rejected it (validation, plan limit)	Fix what the message says — connection is fine
status.txt reports an incident	Us	Nothing to fix aboard; check back on /status

If it's really us

The status page is updated during incidents, and the fix lands there first. You don't need to report an incident that's already listed — but if you're seeing something status doesn't mention, that report is gold. Include:

• Boat name and the email on the account
• What you did, what you expected, what happened
• Your connection type (Starlink, Iridium GO, marina Wi-Fi…)
• The error text from Pending writes, if any

"My family didn't get the shore brief"

Shore briefs are generated and sent from the server — your boat being offline doesn't stop them. If they're not arriving, it's a recipient/schedule question, not a connection one: see Shore briefs and arrival notices.

The one thing not to do

Don't sign out and back in to "fix" it. Signing in needs a live connection — signing out on a bad link locks you out of an app that was working fine offline.

Sign-in is email-only: a magic link (we email you a one-tap sign-in link) or an email + password. Both reach the same account if they use the same address.

Magic link not arriving

1. Give it two minutes; satellite and marina mail can lag.
2. Check spam/junk for mail from watchkeeper.me.
3. Make sure you typed the address your account was created with — the link goes wherever you typed, and a typo'd address fails silently.
4. Request a fresh link; links expire, and only the newest one counts.

"I used to sign in with Google"

The Google and Microsoft buttons were removed in July 2026 to simplify the page. Your account still exists: request a magic link to the same Gmail/Outlook address and you're in — same account, same data. Set a password afterwards in Settings if you prefer passwords.

Password not working

Use the magic-link option to get in, then set a new password in Settings. That's the reset flow — being email-based, it also proves account ownership.

New device, no connection

A device that has never signed in needs a live connection for the first sign-in — there's no way around that, it's what keeps your logbook private. This is why the pre-departure drill says to sign in on every device you might use before leaving coverage. Mid-passage on a dead link, use a device that's already signed in.

Locked out and heading offshore soon

Email support@watchkeeper.me from the address on the account and say when you're leaving — lockouts before a departure jump the queue. The contact form works too, but plain email is fine and works from satellite mail clients.