Availability & blackouts

Under Admin → Availability you shape when boats get used. Availability windows mark the times a boat is open — they paint the club calendar, and a booking must fall fully within them. Blackouts close a boat during times it would otherwise be open: a boat can't be reserved during one.

The page is a week calendar, one boat at a time: pick a boat from the chips at the top, then draw, move, and resize its windows directly on the grid. Use Today and the arrows to step between weeks.

Availability windows

An availability window is a span of time when a boat is shown as open on the club calendar. Windows are set per boat. You can create:

• Recurring windows — a repeating pattern, like "every weekday 09:00–18:00" or "Saturdays and Sundays 08:00–dusk". These follow a recurrence rule so you set them once and they keep applying.
• One-off windows — a single opening for a specific date, handy for a special event or an out-of-pattern day. You can add an optional note (like "Haul-out for bottom paint") to remind yourself why the window exists.

To create a window, drag on an empty part of the grid to draw it (a plain click seeds a one-hour block). An editor opens — a popover beside the block, or a sheet from the bottom of the screen on phones and smaller displays — where you choose Available or Blackout, add an optional note, and save. Ticking Repeat weekly turns it into a recurring rule for that weekday instead of a one-off window. Times snap to 15 minutes.

Recurring windows are expanded forward automatically, so the calendar stays populated weeks ahead without you re-entering anything.

Prefer typing exact dates and times — or working from a keyboard or phone? Select Add manually to open the classic form, which creates the same one-off windows and recurring rules without dragging.

Editing and removing windows

Work directly on the calendar:

• Drag a block to move it — to another time or another day. Drag its top or bottom edge to resize it. Both snap to 15 minutes, and the change saves as you drop it.
• Click a block to open it: change its times, switch it between available and blackout, edit the note, or delete it.
• Blocks generated by a recurring rule are marked with ↻. Changing one affects that occurrence only — follow the Edit the series link in its editor to change the rule itself.
• A window that crosses midnight can't be dragged on the grid; open it and use its detail page instead.

Recurring rules also appear in a list below the calendar, where you can edit or Delete them:

• Editing a recurring rule re-applies it going forward: upcoming occurrences are refreshed to match your changes, while dates already in the past are left as they were. The boat stays fixed — to move a rule to a different boat, delete it and create a new one.
• Deleting a recurring rule removes every window it generated — past ones included.
• Editing or deleting a one-off window only affects that single window.

Blackouts

A blackout closes a period that would otherwise be available — for maintenance, a club race, a private charter, or weather. During a blackout, the affected boats can't be booked even if a recurring window would normally open them.

Use blackouts rather than deleting a recurring window when the closure is temporary; the window resumes automatically afterward.

Resolving conflicts with booked sails

If you set a blackout on a boat that already has sails booked in that period, Zeil won't silently override them. When you save the blackout, it lists every active reservation that overlaps and lets you resolve each one:

• Move the sail to another boat that's free for its time. The list only offers active boats with no clash for that window and enough room for the confirmed crew. The skipper's eligibility for the new boat is checked when you move — if they aren't cleared for it, the move is rejected and you can pick another boat. (Moving a sail doesn't yet notify its crew of the boat change.)
• Cancel the sail with a reason. The skipper and crew get the usual cancellation notification and email.

The list re-scans after each action and clears once nothing conflicts. If no free boat exists for a sail, you can still cancel it — or narrow the blackout so it no longer overlaps.

How members experience this

The club calendar shows members the open windows when they go to book a sail. A booking is refused when the time falls outside the boat's availability windows, overlaps a blackout, the boat isn't active, or the slot is already taken.