Float Plan
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A safety check-in for a trip — send the details to people who aren't aboard, with a manual "we're back safely" follow-up when you're back. Free on every plan.
Sending one
From an active trip in Captain's Log (anyone who can manage that trip), fill in one or more recipient email addresses, optionally check off specific pieces of safety equipment from the boat's tech specs to include, and write free-text instructions under "If you haven't heard from us…" (e.g. "call the Coast Guard by 6pm"). Send Float Plan emails each recipient the trip's stops, departure/expected-return times, and your instructions, plus a link — you (the trip's owner) are CC'd.
Default Float Plan
Instead of filling in the form for every trip, save a Default Float Plan for each boat. Find it on the Float Plans page, where it's collapsed until you expand it. Set:
- Default recipients
- Default message (your "if you haven't heard from us…" instructions)
- When to send:
- Right now, as soon as a trip is logged
- At departure
- Day before departure (or now, if sooner)
From then on, every new trip you log for that boat automatically sends or schedules a Float Plan from these defaults. If you change the trip's departure time, the scheduled send moves with it. If you cancel the trip, the scheduled send is canceled. Trips logged after the fact (in the past) aren't sent. Save defaults to apply your changes. With no default saved, nothing is sent automatically, and you can still send manually as above.
Conditions
Each Float Plan keeps a history of NOAA forecast conditions for the trip: wind, gusts, waves, and tides. Conditions are recorded when the plan is sent, automatically about two to three days before departure, and whenever you click Refresh conditions. Earlier readings are kept, so the plan shows what conditions looked like as the trip approached. This needs the trip's departure to be a linked marine location (see Marine Locations & Weather).
What a recipient sees
The link opens a page with no login required, showing the safety-critical basics. If the recipient signs in with the exact email address the plan was sent to, the page unlocks full detail — crew contacts, vessel identifiers, the equipment you selected — plus a PDF snapshot they can save.
Closing it out
Only the trip's manager (owner or an Editor) closes a plan, with We're back safely next to it — there's no automatic or overdue detection, it's always a manual action. Closing it immediately emails every recipient a follow-up, and timestamps the plan as closed along with who closed it. A plan can only be closed once.
Fleet-wide list
Float Plans, under Crew Corner, lists every trip across your whole fleet that has at least one Float Plan sent, grouped by vessel, with a count of plans still awaiting close-out. It reuses the same panel — history, close-out, send-another — you'd see inside the trip itself.