CREWWIZE CREWWIZE
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Get the right crew together. Sail with them. Keep them.

A crew management and community software for sailing and other crew driven leisure vessels: plan the voyage and the crew ashore, run the passage aboard with no internet at all, and stay a crew community afterwards.

Sign up — free Follow a voyage

Free to register. A vessel needs the appliance aboard and a subscription; the crew's accounts are free and always will be.

CREWWIZE is a crew management and community software for sailing and other crew driven leisure vessels. It contains a CREWWIZE App, a CREWWIZE Cloud Service and a CREWWIZE Appliance to be installed at the vessel. A crew is assembled and a voyage planned ashore; the passage is run aboard with no internet connection of any kind, because the appliance provides the wifi, serves the app to the crew's own phones and writes the logbook itself; and the crew stay a crew community afterwards.

A voyage, end to end

Six moments, and what happens in each

The story first, because it is the argument. What each service does in detail is set out below.

Weeks before · at a desk

You plan the voyage and pick the crew

A voyage is a run of legs, each with its own ports, dates and berths. You invite people by name and email, give them their role, and watch the berths fill leg by leg — so a place free on leg three is never confused with one on leg two. Nobody has to be near the boat, and nobody installs anything yet.

The week before · still ashore

The crew fill in what you would otherwise ask for at 0300

Each person keeps their own emergency data — an emergency contact, and tips for first responders in an emergency situation. It belongs to them; the officers of a vessel they are actually sailing on can read it, and only while that voyage is planned or running. The vessel's own record — MMSI, call sign, safety equipment, papers — is kept once and carried aboard.

Lines off · aboard, no internet from here

The boat takes over, and stays working when nothing else does

The CREWWIZE Appliance provides the wifi and serves the app to the crew's own phones. From this moment nothing needs a connection of any kind. Crew board and muster — because who is aboard is something a person says, never something the wifi guesses — and the watch routine starts when a human starts it.

At sea · aboard

Manoeuvres are talked through, and written down as they happen

Up to eight crew in one full-duplex voice call on the boat's own network — anchoring, reefing, a man overboard drill. The logbook is append-only and hash-chained: weather, sea, position, heading, sails, handovers and decisions, read from the instruments where the boat has them and labelled honestly where she does not.

Along the way · aboard

What goes wrong is recorded before it is fixed

A defect found at sea is a logbook entry first, so closing the job ashore can never alter the record of when it appeared. Alongside it, the crew's own photographs and clips collect behind a disk reserve the logbook keeps for itself.

Alongside again · ashore

The crew stays a crew

Everybody you have sailed with stays in your crew community — by the vessel you shared, the voyage you made, or a personal invitation you sent. Share the voyage with the people who were on it, post what has changed on the boat, and put next season's berths in front of crew who have already proved themselves.

Ashore · CREWWIZE Cloud Service

Get the right crew together

Excellent preparation is what makes a passage seamless. Everything before the lines come off happens at a desk, with a keyboard and a mug of coffee — nobody has to be on the boat, and nobody has to install anything yet.

Voyages and legs

Plan a voyage as a run of legs, each with its own ports, dates and berths. Berths are counted per leg, so a place free on leg three is never mistaken for one on leg two.

Invite your crew

Invitations go out by email from our own mail server — no third party ever handles them. You see whether a message left and what a receiver said if it was refused.

The crew list

One roster per vessel, and one per voyage. Every role carries the scope it applies to, so nobody is ever just “captain” with no boat named.

Emergency data

An emergency contact, and tips for first responders. It belongs to the crew member and to nobody else, travels to the vessel for the voyage they are sailing, and is released when it closes.

Roles and watches

Assign vessel and voyage roles, and plan the watch rota per leg. It is a plan and confers nothing: the routine is started aboard, by a person.

The vessel's record

Specification, safety equipment, sails, insurance, papers, pictures and the maintenance backlog — kept once, carried aboard read-only.

Vessel owner

Register the vessel and keep her record: specification, safety equipment, sails, insurance, papers and pictures. It has one author, so the papers of your asset are not edited by whoever happens to be aboard this week.

Skipper

Plan the passage as legs, invite the crew by email, assign the roles and draft the watch rota per leg from the people actually enrolled on it.

Crew

Accept the invitation, create a free account, and see the voyage you are on. Redeeming an invitation confirms your address, so there is no second email to hunt for.

Aboard · the CREWWIZE Appliance

Keep the crew effective, and keep the record

The appliance installed on the vessel provides the wifi, serves the app to the crew's own phones, and writes the passage down. Nothing it does at sea depends on a server ashore, so none of it stops working four hundred miles out.

Works with no internet

Boarding and muster

Who is aboard is something a person says, never something the wifi guesses. Confirmed and self-reported counts are shown apart and never added together.

Manoeuvres and drills

Run a procedure with the whole crew in one full-duplex voice call — up to eight people on the vessel's own network — and it is logged as it happens.

Watches

Named watches and a rota that prompts and never fires. The clock never changes who is on deck; a handover is a human act.

The logbook

Append-only and hash-chained. Weather, sea, position, heading, sails, handovers and decisions — with instruments read automatically where the boat has them, and every fallback labelled.

Issues, as they happen

A defect found at sea is a logbook entry first. Closing the job ashore can never alter the record of when it appeared.

Moments

Photographs and short video from the crew's own phones, kept apart from the logbook, with a disk reserve the record keeps for itself.

Vessel owner

Nothing, deliberately. While a voyage is under way the vessel is the authority on it, and an owner ashore cannot reassign a job or edit a log entry on a boat at sea. You get the record afterwards, not a remote control.

Skipper

Start a manoeuvre and the crew are in one hands-free call. The manoeuvre writes its own logbook entry with position, wind and who was on the call. Watches, tasks and vessel readings are all aboard and all work with the internet switched off.

Crew

Hear the foredeck and be heard from the helm without shouting or holding anything. See the watch plan, pick up jobs, and write down the bits worth remembering — on your own phone, on the boat's wifi, with no signal.

Afterwards · CREWWIZE Cloud Service

Manage your crew community

A good crew is the hardest thing to find and the easiest thing to lose. Stay connected after the lines go back on, and build a pool of capable people you would sail with again.

Stay connected after the voyage

Everybody you have sailed with stays in your community — by the vessel you shared, the voyage you made, or a personal invitation you sent yourself.

Share the moments

The pictures and clips from the passage, shared with the people who were there, per voyage and never by default.

Vessel news

Post what has changed on the boat — the refit, the new sails, the survey — to the people who care about her.

Promote the next voyage

Put the berths you have free in front of crew who have already proved themselves, instead of strangers on a noticeboard.

Vessel owner

The fleet's voyages in one place, with each vessel's logbook as the vessel wrote it — read-only, because nothing off a boat may change her history.

Skipper

The passage as it happened: who sailed, what was done, when and where. And a crew you can reach next season without collecting eleven phone numbers.

Crew

The people you sailed with stay reachable, the voyage's pictures are shared with the people who were actually there, and you hear when a boat you know has berths going.

Get the app on your phone

The app is free, and it is served by the appliance on your boat rather than by a store — which is the whole reason it works at sea. Scan a code to take the guide with you, or read it here.

Android

The app is a signed package the boat itself serves. There is no Play Store download, because a store needs internet at the moment you install — which is exactly what a boat does not have.

Scan to open this guide on your phone
  1. Join the vessel's wifi. The network name and password are on the join card by the companionway.
  2. Open the boat's own address in Chrome. The card has a QR code for it.
  3. Tap Install app. The file comes from the appliance aboard, not from the internet.
  4. Confirm the install when Android asks. It cannot do this silently, and it will warn you about a file from outside the store — that warning is correct and expected.
  5. If you want to check it, the page shows the package's fingerprint so you can compare it against the one in the ship's folder.

iPhone and iPad

No App Store either, and none needed: the app installs from the boat straight to your home screen through Safari.

Scan to open this guide on your phone
  1. Join the vessel's wifi, from the join card by the companionway.
  2. Open the boat's own address in Safari — it must be Safari, not Chrome, for the next step to exist.
  3. Tap the Share button, then Add to Home Screen.
  4. Open it from the home screen. It runs full-screen, with the microphone, like any other app.
  5. Allow the microphone when asked. Without it you can read everything and speak to nobody.

No account is needed to install the app, and no app is needed to have an account. A crew member who has neither can be sailing with both in about five minutes, most of it spent finding the wifi password.

What it needs

  • The CREWWIZE Appliance aboard, actively cooled, in a sealed enclosure on a marine-grade 12 V supply. We supply it ready to install.
  • The crew's own phones. Android installs a signed package served by the appliance; iPhones install through Safari's Add to Home Screen.
  • Nothing else. No mobile data, no marina wifi, no account with anyone, and no app store on the install path.
  • An internet connection every few months, in port or on a phone hotspot, to renew the vessel's certificate and its subscription.
  • Optionally a Signal K server for instrument data — position, wind, depth and AIS. Without it the app asks a phone for position, and says that it did.

Pricing

An annual subscription per vessel, paid in advance, with the crew seats included rather than charged per head. Crew accounts are free and always will be.

  • A paid vessel keeps working offline for its whole year. Losing connectivity never looks like losing the subscription.
  • After the paid year there are 120 further operating days of full function, with warnings on board and by email.
  • Past that, manoeuvre calls and new operational log entries stop. The existing logbook stays fully readable and exportable, a call already running is never cut off, crew can still be enrolled and accounted for, and a man overboard is refused by nothing.
  • Pricing is not published yet. It will be announced before the product goes on sale.

Sign up

Questions, by role and by stage of the voyage

Grouped the way people actually arrive at them: by who you are on the vessel, and by where you are in the voyage. Each answer stands on its own.

If you own the vessel

Preparing ashore

What about data privacy and security?

Your crew's details are handled by us and by nobody else. Invitations are sent by our own mail server with no relay, there is no analytics, no advertising network and no data broker anywhere in the product. Data on the cloud host is kept on an encrypted volume whose passphrase is not on the machine. We do not claim end-to-end encryption, because the service renders your pages and can read what it stores — and a promise you cannot check is worth nothing.

Who may edit the vessel's record?

You, and only you. Specification, safety equipment, sails, insurance, papers and pictures have one author. A captain who finds a wrong MMSI tells the owner — the papers of your asset are not edited by whoever happens to be aboard this week.

Do I have to sail her myself?

No. Owning a vessel and having a job aboard are separate things: a charter owner holds no role on the boat at all, and the owner of a small boat is simply her captain as well. Neither is inferred — the vessel form asks.

Under way

What happens if the CREWWIZE Appliance fails at sea?

The vessel is exactly as safe as she was without it. Nothing aboard depends on CREWWIZE to navigate, to steer or to call for help, and nothing aboard depends on a server ashore. A call already running is never cut off.

Can anybody ashore see where my vessel is?

No. The CREWWIZE Cloud Service has no notion of who is aboard and no vessel is tracked in real time. There is no position feed, no AIS and no live map of your boat.

Afterwards

What happens when I sell the vessel?

The logbook belongs to the vessel and stays with her, because it is the record of what she did. Your own account, your crew community and the voyages you sailed stay yours. The vessel's cloud record and her subscription are transferred to the new owner.

Can I get the logbook out?

Yes. Reading and exporting the log is never restricted — not by a lapsed subscription, not by anything. A record you can be locked out of is not a record.

If you are skipper, mate or CBO

Preparing ashore

How do I get a crew together for a voyage?

Plan the voyage as a run of legs, then invite people by name and email. Each person gets a role that always carries the scope it applies to, and berths are counted per leg — so somebody joining at the third port does not take a berth on the first.

Can we store and share our vessel specific procedures and guidelines?

Yes. Procedures and checklists are kept on the vessel as templates and are on every crew member's phone the moment they are aboard. A run copies the items, so improving a template never rewrites what an earlier crew actually did. A checklist marked evidential writes one logbook entry per run — never one per tick.

Can I plan the watches before we sail?

Yes, per leg, from the people actually enrolled on that leg. It is a plan and it confers nothing: the routine is started aboard by a person, and nobody ashore can start, stop or advance a watch.

Under way

What do I do in an emergency?

Everything you would do without CREWWIZE, first — it is not a safety device and never replaces VHF, the liferaft or your own drill. What it adds: a man overboard call and a man overboard entry are refused by nothing, on any vessel, in any subscription state; the muster tells you who has been confirmed aboard by an officer and who only said so themselves, and never adds the two together.

How and under what circumstances can I access emergency data?

Each crew member keeps emergency data: an emergency contact, and tips for first responders in an emergency situation. For the crew of the current or next voyage it is carried on the vessel, and is readable there by her officers with no internet, no power ashore and nobody awake — which is the only circumstance it exists for. It is released from the vessel when that voyage is closed aboard. Passports, dates of birth and certificates are separate: they travel per voyage, opt-in, and only with the crew member's own consent.

Who has the deck?

The watch a person started. The clock never changes who is on deck — a handover is a human act. The leader of the watch that actually has the deck may start a manoeuvre and write to the log; that is derived from the running watch and is not a rank anybody carries around.

Is the logbook good enough to stand up afterwards?

Entries are append-only and hash-chained, each one freezing who wrote it, under what authority, from which voyage, and where the time and the position came from. A correction is a new entry pointing at the old one. Anything that altered an existing entry shows up as a broken chain.

Afterwards

How do I keep the crew that worked?

Everybody you have sailed with stays in your crew community, by the vessel you shared, the voyage you made, or a personal invitation you sent. Next season's berths go to people who have already proved themselves rather than to strangers on a noticeboard.

If you are crew

Before you go

Do I need to pay for the app and the service?

No. Crew accounts are free and always will be. The vessel needs the CREWWIZE Appliance aboard and a subscription; nothing is ever charged to a crew member, for anything.

How can I participate on a voyage with a crew?

An officer invites you by email, and you sign up and take your berth — on the whole voyage or on the legs you can make. You can also be introduced by somebody you have already sailed with, which puts you in their crew community where skippers looking for people can find you.

Do I have to install anything?

The CREWWIZE App comes from the vessel herself over her own wifi — there is no app store to reach and no internet needed to install it. On an iPhone it is added straight from Safari; on Android the vessel serves a signed app.

Aboard

What are the functions on board I can use?

Say you are aboard at the muster; join the manoeuvre and drill calls; see your watch and hand it over; write what you saw into the logbook — weather, sea, a position, the sails, a decision; look up the vessel's papers and safety equipment; and put the voyage's photographs and clips somewhere the crew will actually find them.

Does it use my mobile data, and is my phone tracked?

None and no. You are on the vessel's own wifi, and nothing leaves the boat. Being on that wifi is never treated as evidence that you are aboard — only a person saying so counts — and your phone's position is never presented as the vessel's.

Are the calls recorded?

No call is ever recorded, and the appliance never decodes what it forwards. A video clip you film does carry its own soundtrack, which is worth knowing before you point a phone at the cockpit.

Afterwards

What happens to my emergency data when the voyage ends?

It is released from the vessel when the voyage is closed aboard. It is yours to maintain, it is never exported, never put in the logbook, and no owner or operator can edit it.

Can I keep in touch with the crew?

Yes — that is what the crew community is for. The people you sailed with stay reachable, the voyage's pictures are shared with the people who were actually there, and you hear when a boat you know has berths going.

Everything CREWWIZE deliberately is not — and the limits that go with it — is set out in the terms and conditions.

Start with the crew, not the boat

Registering is free and takes a minute. If you charter, run a fleet or want to be part of the sea trials, say so and we will talk.

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