Your Saillogger boat pages are unavailable to other boaters and public visitors until you turn sharing on. This page explains what happens when you do, what each page switch exposes, and how to share with chosen people without leaving your live position open to anyone with the link. A vessel may still appear through public AIS broadcasts independently of these settings.

Turn on sharing

1. Open Settings, then Sharing: saillogger.com/app/settings/sharing.
2. Turn on the top row, Sharing. This is the master switch for every public link.
3. The rest of the screen fills out: your Public boat name, a switch for each page you can share, and the access password rows underneath.
4. Every page switch is now on, and each one shows the public address it has just published. Review the page switches straight away and turn off anything you do not intend to share.

Turning it on publishes all page types initially; after that, you can switch individual page types off. Turning it off makes them all private again.

It reaches two switches that are not on this page. AIS Fleet and Windy live under Settings > Integrations, because neither publishes a Saillogger page, and the master switch turns both on and off with it. A note under the Sharing switch says so, and names only the ones your boat can actually use. If you have set either of them deliberately, check them in Integrations after you move the master.

What each switch exposes

Under Pages you can share, each row is a separate public page, with its own switch and its own address.

Your journal has no switch of its own. It is published with Live tracking & monitoring: turn that on and your journal is public too, turn it off and both are private. That is worth knowing before you write anything personal in a note.

On your live page, the panel naming the boat sits over the chart. Whoever opens the link can fold it down to a single line with the small arrow in its corner, which hands the rest of the chart back, and tap that line to open it again. Folded, it still says which boat this is, whether she is moored, at anchor or under way, and how long ago she last reported. On a phone held sideways it starts folded, because there the open panel would leave almost no chart to read.

Your public address

Public boat name builds your address out of two parts:

• a prefix: SV, MV, SY, MY or RV
• your boat name, at least 3 characters

Together they make addresses like these:

Each row shows its own address once the switch is on, so you can copy the exact link rather than typing it.

A name shorter than 3 characters is refused, and the old name stays. If a rename appears to do nothing, that is almost always why.

Share with a chosen few: the access password

Two rows under Access turn your public pages into pages only your people can open.

1. Turn on Require access password.
2. An Access password field appears. Type a unique passphrase of 12 to 30 characters and leave the field so it saves. Do not reuse a password from another account.

What to know about it:

• It is not your account password. It is a separate word you hand out, and anyone who has it can view the public pages you enabled. Do not reuse the password you sign in with.
• A visitor is asked for it once. After that they stay unlocked in that browser for the rest of their session, so a family member is not typing it every time they check on you.
• Changing it locks out everyone who had the old one, including people already following you, until you send them the new one. An AIS Fleet follower without the current password still sees your AIS position, like any AIS app shows it, but none of your pages or journal.
• Until a password has been saved, Require access password does not restrict the page. Set the password immediately, reload the settings to confirm it was saved, and test the link in a private browser window.

Private sharing, step by step

This is one way to make the boat visible to selected family and friends without opening the pages to everyone who obtains the link.

1. Open saillogger.com/app/settings/sharing.
2. Turn on Sharing.
3. Turn off every page you do not want to publish. Remember that Live tracking & monitoring also publishes the journal.
4. Set your Public boat name now, before you send anything: pick the prefix and the boat name you intend to keep.
5. Turn on Require access password.
6. Type a unique Access password of 12 to 30 characters and tap or click somewhere else so it saves. Reload the screen and check it is still there.
7. Copy the address shown on the Live tracking & monitoring row.
8. Send the address and the password to your people, in the same message or in two, as you prefer.

The warning under the live tracking address disappears when the requirement is switched on, but that alone does not confirm that a password was saved. Reload the screen, then test the link in a private browser window before sending it.

Update your position on AIS Fleet

Under Settings > Integrations (saillogger.com/app/settings/integrations), the AIS Fleet switch decides where your boat's position on the AIS map comes from: on the map at AIS Fleet, our vessel-watching site, and on the AIS layers inside Saillogger.

Your boat is on AIS Fleet already, whatever you do here: once an AIS receiver has heard her MMSI, anyone there can follow her, with no account needed from you and nothing to switch on. What these switches decide is how much a follower sees. With Sharing and Live tracking & monitoring on, they get your journal, the passage you are on and your photo of the boat, and richer departure and arrival e-mails. With them off, or with an access password they do not hold, they keep your AIS position and plainer e-mails built from it, the same signal any AIS site carries. Turning a switch off withdraws your detail, it does not end anyone's follow, and it takes effect immediately for the people already following you. What AIS Fleet is is the full guide to the site.

• On: Saillogger sends the position, speed and course your boat reports to us, so your boat stays current wherever you are, including waters where no AIS receiver can hear you.
• Off: your boat appears as AIS receivers hear it, the same picture every AIS site shows.

It shares no page, which is why it sits under Integrations rather than with your public pages, and it behaves differently because of that:

• The access password does not silence it. Your pages stay behind the password while your own position keeps reaching the AIS map. That is the point of it: you can keep your pages for a chosen few and still have family watch the boat move on AIS Fleet. The position itself is public, as any AIS position is.
• It does not follow the page switches. Turning Live tracking & monitoring off does not turn this off, and turning this off does not affect your link.
• The master Sharing switch still owns it. Turning Sharing on turns this on, and turning Sharing off turns it off, from the other page. If you have switched it off on purpose, check it again after you move the master.

Two things it needs:

• Your MMSI. Saillogger reads it from your boat, so if the switch is greyed out, the number has not reached us. Connect your boat covers where it comes from.
• To have been heard. Saillogger refreshes an existing AIS record rather than creating one, so nothing appears until an AIS receiver has picked up your boat at least once.

Switching it off stops the next update from us rather than erasing the last one: the position you have already sent stays on record until an AIS source replaces it or it ages off the map.

The Share buttons

You do not have to copy addresses by hand. There is a Share button wherever there is something to share: on your boat card, beside Instruments and Journal; on your journal, your stats and any trip page; on the timelapse player beside the range; and on a fleet map. It hands the link to whatever your phone or computer shares with: messages, mail, or the clipboard.

What it hands over is always the public address, never the page you are looking at while signed in. So the person you send it to opens the same boat page any visitor would.

Two of them carry more than the address. Sharing the timelapse sends the range you are watching, so the season you picked plays for the other person too, and sharing your stats sends the period you are reading.

If the page you are trying to share is not switched on under Sharing, the button does not send a dead link. It tells you the page is not public yet and offers Go to Sharing settings instead.

An access password does not stop you sharing. The link still goes out, and the Share button reminds you to send the password along with it, because the person opening the link is asked for it.

Put your boat on your own website

If you keep a blog or a website, you can embed your live page in it. Paste this where you want the map, with your own address in place of the example:

<iframe src="https://saillogger.com/svrenaissance" width="100%" height="600" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>

The frame shows the same public page as the link, so it only works while that page is switched on. If you require an access password, the password prompt also appears inside the embed; a direct link may be clearer for those readers.

Publish your weather to Windy

The Windy switch, under Settings > Integrations (saillogger.com/app/settings/integrations), publishes your boat's observations as a weather station on windy.com. It is useful in places where there is no other station for miles.

The switch stays disabled until Saillogger has received a monitoring reading from your boat carrying at least one weather value: wind, outdoor temperature, humidity or barometric pressure. Whatever your boat measures is published, and the rest is simply left off the station; a boat with only a wind sensor makes a perfectly good station.

Wind needs no special setup. Saillogger combines your masthead's apparent wind with the boat's heading, course and speed to calculate wind over the ground. A source that already supplies ground-referenced wind can be used directly. Water-referenced true wind is not silently relabelled as ground wind, because doing that accurately would also require current set and drift. If a reading cannot be converted without guessing, Saillogger leaves out the affected wind value until enough information returns; any valid temperature, humidity or pressure still publishes. Each update summarizes the usable readings in its latest 15-minute window, publishing their average as sustained wind and their peak as the gust, so a momentary lull at publishing time does not hide what actually blew.

Once a qualifying reading has arrived the switch becomes usable. The master Sharing switch also turns it on and off, so if you have set it deliberately, check it after you move the master. Turning it on sets your station up in the background, so the row shows its Windy address shortly afterwards rather than straight away. Windy can take up to 15 minutes to finish activating a new station and discards readings sent during that setup window, so Saillogger waits until it has passed before publishing your observations. Your first reading normally appears on the next 15-minute publishing update after that.

If you are not a subscriber you can still contribute to Windy: there is a free Signal K plugin at https://github.com/saillogger/signalk-windy-plugin.

Publish your position to NoForeignLand

NoForeignLand is a platform for boaters to connect and stay in touch. Saillogger can keep your position there up to date for you.

In order to submit your positions automatically:

1. On NoForeignLand, open Boat settings, then Boat tracking, then API Key, and copy the key it shows you.
2. In Saillogger, open Settings > Integrations (saillogger.com/app/settings/integrations).
3. Paste it into the Boat API Key field under NoForeignland.

The field saves itself, like the rest of Settings, and the NoForeignland switch above it comes on: that is how you know the key took. Your first position can take up to an hour to appear.

While your boat is reporting to Saillogger, your latest position goes to NoForeignLand about once an hour. Lying at anchor or at a dock does not keep resending the same position, apart from an occasional keepalive showing you have not moved.

To pause, switch NoForeignland off. Your key stays saved, so switching it back on starts you publishing again with nothing to fetch. There is no need to clear the field, and clearing it means a trip back to noforeignland.com for the key next time.

Changing your mind

• Turn one page private. Switch that row off. Its address stops working straight away.
• Turn everything private. Switch the master Sharing row off. Every page switch goes off with it, and so do AIS Fleet and Windy under Integrations.
• Stop sending your position to the AIS map. Switch AIS Fleet off under Settings > Integrations. Your boat then appears as AIS receivers hear it; your pages are unaffected, and so are the AIS broadcasts your boat makes on its own.
• Stop publishing to NoForeignLand. Switch NoForeignland off under Settings > Integrations. Your key stays saved for next time. Nothing else changes.
• Keep sharing but change who can see it. Change the Access password. Everyone with the old one is locked out until you send the new one.
• Respond to an unwanted follower. What a follower can see is controlled by these switches rather than person by person. Turn off Live tracking & monitoring first if this is a privacy or safety concern, then set or change the access password before sharing it again with people you trust; anyone else is left with your AIS position only, the public signal every AIS app carries, which the AIS Fleet switch under Settings > Integrations and your own transceiver govern. Friends, fleets and messages has the full steps.

Turning sharing off does not delete anything. Your logbook, journal, statistics and timelapse are all still there for you, they are just no longer public.