Sailing watch app for offshore crews

DeckVakt is a sailing watch app for skippers who need a fair watch rota, then an app that actually stands the watch with the crew — waking the right person, holding standing orders in front of every watch, and writing the log. The whole system is usable on the phones. The desk app is extra. It works with no signal.

What a sailing watch app has to do

Most crew apps are for marina life: leave requests, hours of rest after the fact, a shared calendar. A sailing watch app for an offshore passage has a different job. It has to decide who is on deck at 03:10, wake that person through silent mode, put the standing orders in front of them, and write down what happened — without asking the phone for a tower.

If it cannot do those four things, it is a planning toy. Useful in the week before you leave. Useless the first night the wind comes up and somebody is seasick.

DeckVakt is built around that job. You name the passage, add the crew, pick a watch system, and hand round a code. From slip time the board is the app: who is on, who is next, when you are due, and the call-me-if list the skipper wrote once.

The watch rota, not a calendar

A yacht watch schedule is not a week of day shifts. The day has to add up to twenty-four hours, the night watches have to be short enough to stand, and the pattern has to move so the same person does not own the graveyard watch. That is a watch rota — or a watch bill, if you learned the word in the navy.

DeckVakt builds Swedish, four on four off with dog watches, 6-6-4-4-4, staggered pairs, or a custom shape you already use. Before you commit, it projects ten days of sleep debt per person and names whoever comes off worst. Fairness is not something you can eyeball on a napkin; night hours, watch count and sleep quality pull in different directions. See crew fatigue.

Clock changes are part of the rota, not a note in the log. You set the steps when you plan. The watch that spans one runs long, the grid shows it, and every alarm moves with it.

Once you are at sea

The live board is the whole app underway. Ship’s time large enough to read half-asleep. Who is on. Who is next. A countdown to your watch. Standing orders at the top, so waking the skipper is an instruction rather than a judgement. Night mode for night vision.

If somebody is seasick at 03:00 you mark them unavailable for a span. You see the new rota, what it costs in fairness, and an undo window. The change is timestamped in the deck log. Nothing in the app overrides the skipper — it shows the cost and records the decision.

Alarms are the part most sailing apps quietly fail. A watch alarm that respects Do Not Disturb is an alarm that does not exist. DeckVakt is built to sound past silent mode, repeat, and escalate to the rest of the watch if nobody answers.

No signal, on purpose

An Atlantic crossing is two weeks without a useful mobile signal. Any sailing watch app that needs the cloud to wake somebody, show the rota or write the log will fail on night one. DeckVakt keeps the rota, the alarms, the board and the record on the phones that hold them.

Sharing is a code in the saloon, not an invitation email. Crew never make an account. Names stay on the devices. That is a privacy consequence of a seamanship one: there is no tower in the middle of an ocean. How we handle crew data.

How the crew join

One person plans the passage. Everybody else joins as crew — scan a code or type something like DECK-4F2, pick their name off the skipper’s list, and their phone now knows when to wake them. Nobody needs to pay or make an account. There is no password and no invitation email.

You can do all of that on the phones. DeckVakt on the desk is optional: a wide screen for convenience, plus extra statistics — fairness, rest hours, sleep debt, system comparison — if you want them laid out. It does not replace the alarms or the live board, and you never need it to run a passage.

If somebody refuses the app, printable watch cards still exist. The person on deck wakes them. The rest of the crew are unaffected. A lost or flat phone is the same problem: every other crew phone holds the full rota.

Paper, spreadsheets and yacht software

Paper on the bulkhead works until the first change. A spreadsheet works until the first night somebody has to read it in a seaway. See paper and Excel versus a sailing watch app. Fleet tools such as ISF Watchkeeper are built for commercial rest-hours compliance across a ship and a shore office. They are the right tool for that job. They are the wrong tool for a six-person yacht that needs a rota tonight and an alarm at 03:40 with no signal.

DeckVakt sits in the gap: yacht watch systems, a live board, offline alarms, standing orders, and the paperwork a delivery or coded yacht still has to produce. It is not a PMS, not a leave calendar, and not a merchant-navy timesheet.

What it costs

Everything is free: planning, real passages, alarms, the live board, all PDFs, briefing cards, sight planner and DR track. Test as often as you need. Only the deliberate Start passage action marks a real departure. After you finish, DeckVakt asks gently whether it earned support; saying not now changes nothing.

After a completed passage, DeckVakt asks whether it earned support. The choices are human: contribute, say not now, or keep using everything for free. Payment never changes a feature.

The app is in development, for the App Store and Google Play. Join the waitlist if you want it for a crossing you are already planning.

Questions skippers ask