The runbook

Watchkeeper organised the way you actually sail it — by phase, not by feature. Each step says what to do, when, and links the article that explains it properly.

New here? Do the first hour first. This page assumes the boat is already in the system.

Phase 0 · Once, ashore

Done one time per boat. An afternoon, and it pays back every passage afterwards.

Task	Where	Article
Account, vessel, call sign, MMSI	Onboarding	Account and vessel
Crew seats and roles	Crew	Seats, roles, invites
Shore contacts	Contacts	Set up your shore crew
Boat manuals into Skipper AI	Skipper	Teach Skipper AI
Ship's papers by country	Papers	Boat-systems pages
Ship's blog, if you want one	Blog	Start your ship's blog

Check your plan's limits here too — vessels, crew seats and AI usage all key off it. → Plans and pricing

Phase 1 · The shore rhythm

Between passages, in port. Fifteen minutes a week keeps the boat honest.

• Maintenance — schedules and completed jobs. The unglamorous discipline that keeps shrouds attached to boats.
• Stowage — zones, locations, items. Find the spare impeller without emptying a locker.
• Sails — inventory with reef states; hours attribute per sail as you log.
• Tanks — fuel, water, waste, black. Feeds Provision AI's meal and range planning.
• Procedures — your own checklists, written when calm, read when not.
• Ship's Papers — registration, insurance, clearance docs, crew documents, filed per country with current entry and exit tips.

→ The boat-systems pages

Sailing more than one boat? Vessels are separate worlds — know what moves with you and what doesn't. → Managing multiple vessels

Phase 2 · Pre-departure

T-24 hours

1. Create the passage — from, to, planned departure, start and finish coordinates. → Plan your first passage
2. Attach your shore contacts to that passage. Contacts on the boat's list do not automatically receive briefs for a passage they aren't attached to.
3. Set the watch rotation for whoever is aboard. → Add crew and set your watch
4. Confirm souls aboard is right. It is the number that matters if anyone ever comes looking.
5. Top up tanks in the app so Provision AI's range and meal planning start from truth.

T-1 hour, on the boat's connection

1. Sign in. Sign-in needs a live connection; logging does not. Do it now, not at sea.
2. Warm the cache. Open Settings → Offline access and press Set up offline access — it registers the service worker and pre-loads Dashboard, Log Book, Passages, Weather and Skipper. The cache holds 30 days of content. Safe to run before every passage.
3. Mark the passage UNDERWAY. Briefs and the arrival notice key off passage state.
4. Send the float plan to your shore crew. It is separate from the automated briefs and it is the document a coordinator would ask for.
5. Save the Offshore Manual and print the emergency card.

→ Logging offline — the 2-minute drill

Phase 3 · Underway

Every watch

• Post a log entry at handover: position, speed, mode, weather, a line of narrative. This is the spine everything else hangs from.
• Change the mode when it changes — sailing, motoring, motor-sailing, anchored. Mode is sticky, so an unchanged mode keeps carrying forward and your engine hours quietly go wrong. → Passage Mode
• Log the notable separately — VHF calls, fish, service, incidents. They land on the Ship's Log timeline alongside your entries.

Every day

• Check the outbox — entries written offline queue and flush on the next connection. Know what's still pending. → Logging offline
• Glance at the shore brief that went out. If your family didn't get it, better to find out on day two than day twelve.
• Ask Skipper AI before you take anything apart. It has read your manuals. → Skipper AI and Provision AI

What your shore crew sees

Three independent things feed the picture ashore, and it's worth knowing which you actually have:

1. Your log entries — every plan. Nothing arrives if you stop writing.
2. A satellite tracker — Offshore and Bluewater. Position without you lifting a finger.
3. A GPX file — per passage, uploaded after the fact.

→ Positions, trackers, and your track

Shore briefs go out on a schedule to the contacts attached to the passage. → Shore briefs and arrival notices

Phase 4 · Landfall

1. Mark the passage ARRIVED. This fires the arrival notice — summary, last position, thanks, and an explicit "no more updates coming" so nobody sits watching a dead feed.
2. Close the watch rotation and reconcile souls aboard if anyone is stepping off.
3. Upload the GPX if you were recording on a chartplotter — it backfills the track.
4. Clear in. Your ship's papers are already filed by country with that country's entry requirements. This is the part that pays for the whole idea.

→ Boat-systems pages — Ship's Papers

Phase 5 · Back in port

• Export the passage — CSV, PDF, TXT or Markdown per passage, or the whole fleet as a zip. Do this before you ever consider cancelling anything. → Export your logbook
• Write the blog post while it's fresh, and check who can see it. → Ship's Blog and sharing
• Close out maintenance — what broke, what you fixed, what you now need. Feeds the buy list.
• Restock against Provision AI's actuals rather than your memory of them.

Phase 6 · When something is wrong

Sixty-second triage, in order:

1. Is it you or us? Check status — and the text-only /status.txt, which loads on almost nothing.
2. Can't sign in? → Sign-in problems
3. Briefs not arriving? Check the contacts are attached to this passage and the passage is UNDERWAY.
4. Entries not showing ashore? Check the outbox — they may still be queued.
5. Still stuck? → write to a human. Include the boat name and where you are.

The one thing not to do: don't uninstall or clear site data to "fix" it. That is where an unsynced outbox goes to die.

→ Is it your connection or us?

The account, once a year

• Check the plan still fits — vessels, crew seats, AI usage. → Plans and pricing
• Take a full export and store it off the boat. Belt and braces.
• Review who is on the shore-crew list. People move, addresses rot, and the list is only useful if it's current.

→ Manage or cancel your subscription

Print this

Heading offshore, take three things: this runbook, the Offshore Manual, and the emergency card. All three save or print to PDF and read fine with no connection at all.