User guide

Sail or motor: setting up your kind of boat

On this page: A sailboat · A motorboat · For assistants

Kestrel is a sailboat with a small diesel that runs a few hours a trip; her neighbour on the pontoon has two petrol inboards and a bow thruster and never raises a sail. The app is the same for both, and so are its words: equipment, plans, jobs, readings, trips. What differs is what you add first and how its schedules count. This chapter takes each kind of boat in turn, after the first run in Setting up the boat and engine.

Three things hold for both:

• Type decides the suggested plans. Add equipment with its type, and its page offers Suggested plans for that type. Which types carry suggestions is listed in each part below.
• A suggestion repeats by engine hours only when its equipment has a reading at the moment you add it. Set up engine hours and record the current hours first, and an oil change comes as "Every 100 engine hours or every year". Added before the first reading, it comes as "Every year"; Edit plan with Repeat by set to Both adds the hours afterwards.
• Diesel engine, Petrol inboard engine, Outboard engine, Tender outboard and Generator carry engine hours. An engine added in the first run has its meter already; one added later gets it from Set up engine hours on its page. Each has its own meter, its own readings and its own plans.

A sailboat

On a sailboat most of the record is on the calendar. The engine is an auxiliary that may run forty hours a season, and the rig, the sails and the deck gear wear by the year whatever the engine does. The usual plans therefore come due by date, and the hours matter for the engine alone.

The auxiliary

In the first run, choose Diesel inboard as the engine's type. The first run sets it up with its meter and, given the hours on the meter, a first reading. Its suggested plans are below.

• Whichever comes first. On an engine that runs little, the year usually comes before the hours. The hours still count, so a season of long passages brings the oil change forward.
• Record the hours when you end a trip. End trip and Log a trip ask the engine's hours, and the reading is dated at the trip's end.
• A saildrive or a shaft is added as the type Shaft, propeller or saildrive, which suggests the Anodes plan. A stuffing box is Stuffing box & cutlass bearing, with a Stuffing box check every 6 months.

The rig and the sails

Add the rig and the sails as equipment, one piece for each thing you would service on its own: the mast and standing rigging, each sail, each winch.

• The rigging's age is a date on it. Give the mast and standing rigging its Installed date, so the equipment page shows when it was fitted.
• A renewal you have in mind is Service or expiry due. Put the year you mean to re-rig there, and Today reports it in Soon from 60 days before and in Do first once the day has passed (see Dates).
• One sail, one piece of equipment. The mainsail and the genoa each get their own plan, and a problem with one stays on that sail's page.

Trips and checklists on a sailboat

• A day sail leaves from the home place. A new trip whose start is at no saved place takes the home place as where it left from (see Start a trip).
• A longer passage is planned. Plan a trip gives it a page, and its Prepare section lists your departure checklists and the kits made for it (see Prepare).
• A departure checklist is a checklist whose When is it used? is Before departure. It appears on a planned trip's Prepare section and on Today's trip card. An arrival checklist (On arrival) is offered by End trip.
• Spares in the lockers are items in locations: "Cockpit locker", "Under the saloon berth". A kit lists what a passage needs and says what is missing (see Kits).

The public site's page for a sailboat owner: LazyJack for a sailboat.

A motorboat

On a motorboat the engine hours drive most of the service. The engines run every trip, and the usual plans for them come round every 100 or 200 engine hours, or every year if that comes first. The record's job is to keep each engine's hours, so each engine's jobs come due when they should.

Engines at the first run

The first run's engine step asks the engine's Type: Diesel inboard, Petrol inboard or Outboard. Name the engine for the boat: "Port engine", not "Engine", because that name labels its hours everywhere.

• The second engine is added in the first run too. Step 3 has Add another engine, which goes back to the engine step with a form named "Engine 2"; call it "Starboard engine", give its type and hours, and step 3 then lists each engine's plans under its name.
• A later engine (a third, or one added after the first run) is added with Add equipment. On its page, Set up engine hours makes its meter and Record hours gives it its first reading. Then add its suggested plans.
• Each engine's plans count its own hours. The port engine's oil change is due by the port engine's readings, the starboard's by the starboard's.
• End trip and Log a trip ask the hours of each engine, each field labelled with the engine's name. Leave a field as it is and no reading is recorded for that engine.
• Record a reading asks which engine when there are several.
• The plans have the same titles on both engines. If two rows called "Engine oil and filter" are confusing, Edit plan and name the engine in "What needs doing?" ("Port engine oil and filter").

Engines, outboards and the generator

• An outboard as the main engine is the type Outboard engine, chosen as Outboard in the first run. The tender's small outboard is the type Tender outboard, in the Tender & outboard group.
• A sterndrive is the drive leg of an inboard engine: add the engine as Petrol inboard engine or Diesel engine, and the leg with Add equipment as Sterndrive or outdrive. The leg's plans repeat by the calendar.
• The generator has its own hours. Set up engine hours on its page, and its oil, fuel filter and impeller jobs count the generator's readings, not the engines'. End trip asks its hours with the engines'.

The rest of a motorboat

• The usual items come with the plans. Ticking "Also add the usual items to Inventory and to these plans" adds the oil filters, fuel filters, spark plugs and impellers the engine and generator plans use, so To buy knows what to get (see Inventory and To buy).

Trips and the winter

• A run to the island and back is one trip. Log a trip afterwards records it in one form, with each engine's hours; Start a trip and End trip record it as it happens (see A trip: before, during and after).
• An engine checklist (When is it used? Engine) is a button on Today, for the checks before starting the engines.
• Laying up for the winter can be a plan and a checklist. A plan with Repeat by Calendar and Every season, autumn, comes due on 1 September each year in the northern hemisphere. A checklist (When is it used? Other) holds the steps, and a run of it keeps what you ticked. See Lay up for winter, recommission in spring.

The public site's page for a motorboat owner: LazyJack for a motorboat.

For assistants

1. Send the equipment's type from list_values_get; the type decides the suggestions the owner sees.
2. One meter per engine. Read meter_list, then meter_create for an engine that has none, before reading_record.
3. A reading names its meter. With two engines, record each engine's hours on its own meter; never add them together.
4. Readings on a trip go in voyage_complete's readings, one per engine.

Not in this chapter

The first run, Boat details, the papers and the rules readings must pass: Setting up the boat and engine. How a plan's next job is scheduled, and Do first, Soon and Later: Work: plans, jobs and problems. Trips: A trip: before, during and after. Checklists: Documents and papers. Items and kits: Inventory and To buy.

This chapter as Markdown · llms.txt