Saillogger has three social features: Friends puts other boats on your map, a fleet puts a group of boats on one shared map, and messages connects boats through their follows and fleets. Friends and fleets use MMSI, the number broadcast over AIS, so an AIS-equipped boat can appear even when its owner does not use Saillogger.

Follow another boat

Friends is one page, saillogger.com/app/friends, and the chart is the page: every boat you follow drawn live, with boats under way trailing the passage they are on. The list floats over the chart. Beside a wide chart it is a column, open from the start; on a phone it rests as a bar along the bottom that reads like "8 boats · 2 under way · 1 arrived today", so the morning's answer is there before you touch anything. Tap the bar (or the people button on a wide chart) and the full list opens; the Show everyone button on the chart always brings the whole fleet back into view.

The list groups itself by what matters: Under way first, then Moored (nearest to you first in each), then Not reporting for boats that have gone quiet for a long while, whose rows read Last seen with a date instead of claiming to know where they are now. Boats that have never shared a position at all sit under Not on the chart, so every boat you follow has a row. A boat at her own home berth says so: At home in her harbour.

Finding one boat. Once you follow more than a handful, the list carries a search box. Type part of a boat's name, or the place her row names ("blind channel" finds everyone lying there), or her MMSI. The groups and their counts follow what you typed, and the line under the title reads "3 of 34 boats" so you always know you are looking at a filtered list. The chart never changes: every boat you follow stays drawn on the water while you search, so the boat you are looking for cannot vanish from the one place you would look for her. Clear the box to get the whole list back. On a computer, press / to jump straight into it.

Following a boat, by name. The Follow a boat button at the top of the list opens a search box. Type the boat's name and she comes back with what tells her apart from every other boat of that name: what kind she is, how long, whose flag, which sea, how far from you and which way, and when she last reported. Press Follow on her row.

You can search her MMSI, call sign or IMO number in the same box, and a full nine-digit MMSI is looked up exactly. Three characters is the minimum. If she is password protected, the button reads Follow… and asks for the password on her row: the same one her owner gives anyone opening their link.

You can follow up to 100 boats.

Picking a boat. Tap her row and the chart glides to her: a boat under way is framed with her whole passage, a moored boat with the water around her, never a lone dot. Tap her mark instead and her card opens with the chart exactly where you left it. Either way she gets a ring, and her card leads with what you came for: what she is doing and where ("At anchor in Echo Bay", and for a Saillogger boat, since when), her Speed and Heading while under way, then her photograph, with the registry details like MMSI at the end. Closing the card keeps her selected, so the ring and her passage stay while you look around; Show everyone steps back out to the whole fleet.

Acting on a boat from her card. Message leads, when the two of you are connected (see Messages). With it:

• Following, which is also how you stop. Press it once and it asks Unfollow?; press again and she is gone. That frees one of your 100 slots, and you can follow her again later.
• Tracking and Journal, when she publishes them: her live page and her written log.
• 24h track, when there are AIS positions to draw, which lays her last day's broadcasts over the chart. Hide track puts it away. Those fixes can be many minutes apart, so the trail is coarser than a logged voyage, and the card says so while it is on.
• Add photo, which opens the upload right over the chart. Photographs go to the AIS gallery for that MMSI, credited to you; they never replace the owner's own boat photo.
• Add to fleet, if you own a fleet. It lists yours, and says out loud that fleet members will see her live position.

And from her row in the list. The ⋯ button beside each boat carries a shorter set:

• Open tracking page, her live page, the same one the card's Tracking opens.
• Open journal, when she publishes one, the same one the card's Journal opens.
• Message, and Add a photo, as above.
• Unfollow, which asks by name before it acts.

On a phone. The list and the card share one sheet along the bottom of the chart, and it moves under your thumb. Swipe up on the summary bar to open the list, and up again to make it taller when you want to read more of it at once; swipe down to step it back, one stop at a time. Tapping the bar or the handle does the same thing if you would rather not swipe, and the small chevron beside the handle makes it taller. The sheet never disappears entirely: pull it all the way down (or press the back gesture, or Escape) and it returns to the summary bar, keeping your selection. The taller stop always leaves a strip of chart above it, because this screen is a chart first. When you pick a boat low on the chart, the chart nudges itself up so her mark stays visible above her own card.

If a follow cannot be added

• She is not publicly viewable. The owner has not enabled the required sharing settings, and the answer comes back on her row when you press Follow. Ask them whether they want to make the boat available and point them to Sharing settings.
• She is not in the search at all. No AIS receiver has ever heard that boat. Try again once she is under way near a receiver.
• You are at the maximum of 100. Unfollow a boat you no longer watch before adding another.

Boats that are not on Saillogger

You are not limited to other Saillogger boaters. A vessel broadcasting AIS can be followed like any other, using positions available from the AIS network rather than private Saillogger records. AIS availability and coverage vary, and local rules still apply.

The trade is that an AIS-only boat shows you what AIS carries (where she is, where she is heading) and nothing of the owner's own logbook or journal.

What you get from a boat you follow

You get an e-mail when a boat you follow departs, and another when she arrives, so you can receive updates without keeping the chart open.

To stop those e-mails, turn off the Friends row in your notification settings, which also covers new-follower e-mails. See Alerts and notifications.

If a boat you follow has no position yet

A boat that has never reported a position still gets a row, under Not on the chart, so you can always message or unfollow her; she joins the chart the moment she reports.

If a boat you follow is not on your list at all

A boat appears on your friends list only while her owner shares her position with you. If that stops (they made their boat private, or changed the access password they gave you), she leaves your list and your chart.

The list never hides the fact: under the roster it says how many of the boats you follow are not on it, so a boat you have just followed is never silently absent. It cannot tell you which boat or why, and that is deliberate: naming her would tell you what another boater decided about you specifically. If a boat you used to see disappears, ask her crew rather than waiting, and if they want you back on their list, point them to Sharing settings.

You still follow her. Nothing is lost, and she returns to your list by herself the moment sharing is restored. She also still counts against your 100, so unfollow her if you no longer want her there.

Who is following you

When someone starts following your boat, you get an e-mail about it. Your list of followers is at saillogger.com/app/followers.

Each row has an action:

• Follow back, when their boat is publicly viewable, so you can add them to your own map with one tap.
• Ask to follow, when it is not. That sends them an e-mail asking them to make their boat viewable so you can follow them back. You can only ask the same person again after a while, so the row then reads Already asked.
• Remove follower, under the action on every row. Removing takes your boat off that follower's map and list, stops their departure and arrival e-mails about you, and does not notify them. It works the same for Saillogger and AIS Fleet followers.

Removing is not a lock: if your boat is publicly viewable they can follow you again (and you would get the usual new-follower e-mail). If your boat has an access password, a removed follower needs the current password to get back in, so change the password in Sharing settings at the same time if you want to keep them out.

Followers who come from AIS Fleet

Some of the people following your boat will be on AIS Fleet, the vessel-watching site we also run. They behave like any other follower: they carry an AIS Fleet badge on the row, you get the same e-mail when a new one arrives, and one who follows your boat can start a conversation with you in Messages, exactly as a Saillogger boater who follows you can.

Two differences are worth knowing:

• This list shows the people who can open your pages right now. It is empty while Live tracking & monitoring is off, and an AIS Fleet follower who does not hold your current access password drops off it while still following your AIS position. So it answers "who can see my pages" rather than "who is watching my boat". A member with no boat of their own shows as No boat under the name they published, and there is nobody to follow back.
• When you withdraw sharing, the two kinds of follower part company. A Saillogger boater following you through Friends normally loses your boat from their map, while an AIS Fleet follower keeps your AIS position and the plainer departure and arrival e-mails built from it.

You do not need an AIS Fleet account for any of this. Friends here is included in your subscription and follows up to 100 boats, AIS-only ones among them. What AIS Fleet is covers the site itself.

Fleets

A fleet is a shared chart for a group of boats: a rally, a club, a family with two boats, a charter operation.

Your fleets are at saillogger.com/app/fleets, the ones you own marked Owner. Open one for its chart, the boats on it and how each is doing.

Open a boat on the fleet

The fleet's chart sits above its roster, nearest boat first, and it follows you down the list on a phone so it is always in view.

Tap any boat, in the roster or on the chart, and she opens:

• Where she is and what she is doing, with her speed, course and how long she has been under way when she is on passage.
• Wind at the boat, how far she is from you, and her MMSI.
• Tracking, which opens her live tracking page. Only boats whose owners share publicly have one.
• Message her crew, Follow her so she joins your own Friends list, 24h track to draw where she has been, Add photo, and Add to fleet if you run a fleet of your own. You see an action only where it would work: a boat you cannot reach shows no Message button rather than one that refuses.

Closing the boat leaves her selected on the chart, so you can see where she sits among the others.

Create one

1. Press New fleet, beside the heading on your fleets page.
2. Fill in Name and Description.
3. Decide Public fleet: on, and anyone with the link can see the fleet chart; off, and it is for members.
4. Create it. You land on the fleet.

You can own up to 5 fleets, and a fleet can hold up to 100 boats.

Add boats

Owners add boats from the fleet's Manage screen, which is beside the fleet's name. Add a member by MMSI, one at a time. Both kinds of boat can be members: a Saillogger boat, and a boat that only shows up on AIS.

A Saillogger boat can only be added if its owner has made it public: Sharing on, Live tracking & monitoring on, and no access password. This respects the owner's current sharing choice because fleet membership shows the boat's live position to every member. If the boat cannot be added, ask the owner to check their Sharing settings.

There is no self-service fleet join or fleet directory. Ask the fleet owner to add you and give them your MMSI, shown under Settings > Sharing and Settings > Boat. The boat must have Sharing and Live tracking & monitoring on with no access password before it can be added.

Delete a fleet

Only the boater who created a fleet can delete it. The Manage screen ends with Delete fleet, which opens a page listing what the deletion takes with it before you confirm.

Deleting is permanent, and it affects everyone in the fleet rather than only you:

• Every boat stops appearing on the fleet chart, and the fleet layer leaves their own dashboards.
• The fleet chat and everything written in it is removed for all its members.
• The fleet's link stops working, including anywhere you have shared it or shown the fleet on a website. That address is never reused, so an old link will not open somebody else's fleet later.

Nothing else about those boats changes. Their own trips, logs, photos and accounts were never part of the fleet, and its members are not told that the fleet has gone, so let them know first if they are counting on it.

Two things often serve better than deleting:

• To take the fleet off its public link, turn Public fleet off instead. Its members keep the map and the chat.
• To drop the wrong boats, remove them one at a time and keep the fleet.

Renaming changes the name people see, but not the fleet's link.

If a Saillogger promotion code adds boaters to your fleet, the confirmation page says so and the fleet cannot be deleted there. Write to [email protected] and we will take care of it.

If you are a member rather than the owner

Members get a Settings screen for the fleet in the same place an owner gets Manage, with two things on it:

• Add to favorites, which pins the fleet into your own navigation so you can reach it in one tap.
• Leave fleet, which removes you and your boat from that chart.

Fleet chat

Every fleet carries a Chat button beside its name: a group conversation available only to current members, including when the fleet chart itself is public.

Messages

Direct messages live at saillogger.com/app/messages, and behind the envelope at the top right of every screen.

You can start a conversation with a boater whose boat:

• you follow, or
• follows you, or
• is in one of your fleets.

A follow in either direction is enough to allow a conversation, as is sharing a fleet. This means someone who follows a publicly shared boat may be able to write to its owner. Conversations are titled by boat name, and your e-mail address is not shown to the other boater.

What to expect

Messages older than 30 days are removed for everyone, along with their photos. If something matters, keep it somewhere else: a message thread is not an archive.

Rate limits apply to sending messages. If you reach one, wait before trying again.

Each message you send results in an e-mail to the other person (and a push notification, if they have set one up), so a conversation works even when neither of you is looking at the site. Your own side of that is the Direct Messages and Fleet Messages rows in your notification settings: see Alerts and notifications.

Deleting a conversation clears your copy. It does not remove the other participant's copy from their inbox. A new message from them brings the conversation back.

Block a boater

To stop someone from messaging you, open your conversation with them and press the block button in its header. Blocking works both ways: neither of you can message the other, search for the other, or start a new conversation, and the existing conversation is hidden for both of you. The other boater is not told they were blocked.

You can review and undo your blocks any time: once you have blocked someone, a blocked link appears on your Messages page. Unblocking brings the conversation back for both of you, though messages still expire on the normal 30-day schedule.

Blocking only affects messages. It does not change who follows your boat (use Remove follower on your followers page for that), and it does not apply to fleet chats: a fleet chat is a shared room for everyone currently in the fleet, so if you both stay in a fleet you will still see each other there. Leaving the fleet, or asking its owner to remove them, is the way out of a shared room.

If your friends do not use Saillogger

Friends, fleets and messages are for boaters with an account. To let family ashore follow you, send them your link or point them at AIS Fleet: For family and friends without Saillogger is written for exactly that, and is safe to forward. What AIS Fleet is is the full guide to that site, whether they use it or you do.