Why a hull needs a record
Every boat has a history and almost none of it survives a sale.
Today the history lives in PDFs, invoices, yard emails, a survey Word file and the seller's memory. Four things go wrong. All four are failures of the paperwork, not of the boat.
Four failures of the record
- What the boat is worth. A well-kept yacht and a neglected one look the same when neither can prove anything. We will not quote a price gap we cannot back.
- Insurance. An underwriter prices on age, value and a survey every few years. Good care is invisible. Unknown risk stays high.
- Buying. The buyer trusts the seller, pays a surveyor to find again what earlier surveyors already found, and still cannot check what was left out.
- Surveying. Many surveyors type a report at night. That PDF dies in a drawer. The next surveyor on the same hull starts from nothing.
The vision
Every hull has one record that outlives its owners, and every line in it says who signed for it.
One book: what is fitted, what was done, who did it, and who signed. The owner keeps it. A surveyor can fill it as part of the survey. When the boat is sold, the book goes with the hull.
Five parties, one book
| Who | Today | Later | Easier life |
|---|---|---|---|
| Owner | Closed alpha Keeps the book; sends a read-only file | In progress Signs with their phone; shares a named link and closes it | What is due, in plain words. Fewer surprises. |
| Buyer | Closed alpha Opens a file and checks the signatures with no account | Planned A file addressed to them; a sale both sides sign | Signed lines to read, not a seller's tone. |
| Surveyor | Closed alpha Records and signs Findings, under a labelled stand-in | Planned Sign with their own phone; work with no signal; a report in their layout. Concept A national eID, only if a party requires it | The book is the deliverable. The next look starts from this one. |
| Insurer | Nothing | Planned A short file of chosen sections | Signed evidence instead of a scanned PDF. SailOS never sets a premium. |
| Yard | Nothing through the product | Planned Signs work it performed | Signed proof when a dispute arrives years later. |
A skipper, a broker or a technician can act for someone, in their own name, with that person's permission. There is no sixth role.
Seven principles
- Signed beats claimed. Unknown is an answer.
- Signed lines stay. Corrections add. Nothing is deleted.
- The owner controls sharing. Every share has a limit and an end.
- Software proposes. People sign. Nothing automated signs or holds a key.
- Plain British English. Full sentences. No jargon on the boat.
- The owner can leave with the record. A file they take still checks without us.
- SailOS takes no side in a sale and earns nothing from the price.
What SailOS is not
SailOS is not, and in its first year will not become:
- A crew or planned-maintenance system for large yachts.
- A class-society portal or a compliance tool for commercial vessels.
- A listing site, marketplace or brokerage. A share can sit inside any listing; we do not run one.
- An insurer, a premium calculator or a risk score.
- A register of ownership. We store register numbers as plain text; we are not a register.
- A chatbot with a boat theme. The book and the signatures are the product.
- A blockchain.
- A charter, booking or provisioning platform of any kind.
Where this stands today
Closed alpha An owner can keep one boat. A surveyor can sign findings. A file of signed work can be sent and checked without an account. What is not built is on the roadmap, labelled.