Shore Chat

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.