Keeldragger Sailing Offshore Toolkit

A mentor, not a gatekeeper.

This is the most complete offshore planning toolkit we know how to build — nearly 400 checklist items, six printable documents, calculators for everything from watch rotations to amp-hours. None of it is homework.

There's no score you owe anyone. Mark half the checklist N/A because your boat doesn't carry those systems — that's a decision, not a failure, and the readiness score only counts what you've said matters. Print the two documents you want and ignore the rest. Or read the checklist like a book and never tap a single item; the reading is preparation too.

Every item here is borrowed experience — things offshore sailors learned, sometimes expensively, and wrote down so you don't have to. What you do with it is seamanship, and seamanship belongs to the skipper. Casting off has never required a perfect boat. It requires an informed skipper making the call. This toolkit's only job is the informed part.

One toolkit. Every document your passage actually needs.

Everything feeds everything else — enter your vessel, crew, and passage once, and it flows into the checklist, the float plan, the watch bill, the emergency cards, and the provisioning and energy numbers.

Offshore Readiness

Know where the boat stands

Self-assess across 26 boat systems and nearly 400 checklist items — rigging to medical kit. A readiness heatmap shows weak systems at a glance, and a stack-ranked priority work list puts the highest-risk open items on top. Attach photos, add your own items, mark what doesn't apply.

Float Plan

The document your shore team holds you to

Vessel description written for search and rescue, crew with photos and critical health information, itinerary with waypoints, comms schedule, an autonomy summary — days of stores, water, fuel, and power — and exactly what to do if you're overdue.

Watch Bill

Who's on, when — and what handover means

Rotating watches, the Swedish system, staggered pairs, or a solo rest plan. A visual grid with exact start and stop times, handover tasks for coming on and going off, and a seven-day daily-rounds tick sheet for the walkaround that keeps small problems small.

Emergency Cards

For the moments nobody thinks clearly

Thirteen action cards loosely modeled on SOLAS muster conventions — fire, flooding, man overboard, the Mayday script, abandon ship, a storm plan by wind band, a comms plan, seacock locations, electrical isolation. Pre-filled for a cruising sailboat; every line editable for yours. Print, laminate, stow within reach.

Provisioning

A calculator, not an inventory

Crew and days come from your passage; you set a safety margin and a few toggles and get a shopping-quantity sheet — water, protein, staples, watch snacks, consumables, morale stores. Rates are the boat's appetite: tune them once and the next passage already knows how much coffee you drink.

Energy Budget

Does the boat break even before breakfast?

A daily amp-hour balance: loads against solar, wind, and hydro — realistically derated — with the engine hours needed to close any gap, and how long the bank lasts if charging fails. That engine fuel is added to your provisioning figure automatically.

Pick your documents. Get one packet.

Check what you want and the toolkit binds it into a single PDF behind a cover sheet — with a clickable contents list that jumps to each section. One file to print for the boat, one to send ashore, and a photo-quality control that keeps it small enough for a satellite connection.

Watch bill page with a color-coded 24-hour watch grid and exact watch times table — Watch bill — visual grid with exact times

Passage autonomy and energy page with days of stores, water, fuel and daily power balance — Autonomy & energy — what the boat is carrying

Daily rounds page with a seven-day check-off grid of inspection items — Daily rounds — laminate it, mark it with a grease pencil

Float plan first page with passage description, comms schedule, and tracking links — Float plan — written for your shore team

Storm plan card with a sail matrix by wind strength and decision triggers — Storm plan — what to carry, and when to change it

Fire in engine room emergency card with immediate actions and gear locations — Emergency card — actions first, in order

Offshore readiness report cover with category heatmap — Readiness report — the whole boat on one page

Built to be used three times

1 · Preparing the boat

Work the checklist over weeks or months — or just read it. The priority list tells you what matters next; the heatmap tells you when a system is actually ready.

2 · Briefing the crew

Walk the crew through the watch bill, the handover tasks, and every emergency card before departure — the cards are for recall under stress, not for learning on the day.

3 · Underway

The laminated set lives at the nav station: watch times, daily rounds checked off with a grease pencil, and action cards where they can be reached in the dark.

Your data is your data.

Stored on your device

Everything lives locally — on your iPhone, iPad or Mac, or in your browser — and the whole toolkit works offline. Nothing is sent anywhere unless you switch on one of the sync options, and they start off.

Sync without giving anything up

Sync through your own iCloud, which never reaches us at all. Or use a free Keeldragger account, where your boat is encrypted on your device with a passphrase only you know — what we hold is ciphertext we cannot read, crew passports and medical details included.

You choose what leaves the boat

No ads, no analytics, no third parties, and nothing shared until you export it. Print the packet, save it as a PDF, or send it — to exactly the people you choose. A full backup-and-restore keeps your data portable, and an account can be deleted outright, in the app, whenever you like.

A planning aid — not a substitute for seamanship. The Keeldragger Sailing Offshore Toolkit helps you prepare, document, and brief. It does not replace training, sound judgment, or experience, and the developer assumes no liability for its use or its output. The captain or master remains solely responsible for the vessel, the crew, and safe passage. Every checklist item, card, and task is a starting point — customize them to your vessel, your crew, and your passage, and verify every location and procedure aboard your own boat.

Keeldragger Sailing
Offshore Toolkit