Fleet management
Create boat classes and boats, set specs and crew rules, and manage boat status.
Your fleet is the heart of the club. Zeil organizes it in two layers: boat classes and individual boats. Manage both under Admin → Boats and Admin → Boat classes.
Boat classes
A boat class describes a type of boat — typically a make and model (for example, "Beneteau First 36"). Classes hold the shared characteristics, so you don't re-enter them for every hull. Endorsements can be granted at the class level, clearing a skipper for every boat of that type at once.
Create your classes first, then add boats to them.
To rename a class or change its details later, open it from the class list under Admin → Boat classes, edit, and save. You can also delete a class from the same page — but only once no boat is assigned to it. If boats still use the class, Zeil refuses the delete and tells you how many; move those boats to another class (or clear their class) first.
Boats
Each boat belongs to a class and carries its own details:
- Name and the class it belongs to.
- Specs — hull length, displacement, sail area, notes, and a photo.
- Home coordinates (optional) if a boat lives somewhere other than the club's home location.
- Crew rules (below).
- Status (below).
Crew and skipper rules
These rules are what Zeil enforces before a sail can be confirmed:
| Setting | What it controls |
|---|---|
| Minimum crew | Fewest confirmed crew needed to sail. |
| Maximum crew | Most people allowed aboard. |
| Minimum skippers | How many eligible skippers must be on the crew. |
| Minimum skipper certification level | The certification level a skipper needs for this boat. |
Set these thoughtfully — they directly determine who can take the boat out and with how many people. See how members experience them in Building your crew.
Guest limit
The guest limit sets how many non-member guests the skipper, an admin, or confirmed crew can bring aboard this boat. Leave it at 0 (the default) to keep guest invites turned off for the boat; set it higher (up to 20) to opt the boat in.
Guests count toward the boat's maximum crew as well as the guest limit, so confirmed crew plus active guests can never exceed the maximum. A guest holds their seat from the moment they're invited — not only once they've signed the waiver — so pending invites consume the limit too. Members see the guest flow in Building your crew.
Boat status
| Status | Effect |
|---|---|
| Active | Bookable; appears in calendars. |
| Maintenance | Hidden from booking while out of service. |
| Retired | Removed from the active fleet. |
Set a boat to maintenance rather than deleting it when it's temporarily out — that preserves its history and makes it easy to bring back.
Moving an active boat to maintenance or retired alerts everyone holding an upcoming reservation on her — in-app and by email (the Club updates preference) — so crews can re-plan before turning up to a missing boat.
Gear issues flagged by members
After a completed sail, the people who were aboard can flag gear issues against the boat from the sail's debrief — a fraying halyard, a dead instrument. Every club admin gets an in-app notification linking straight to the sail, and the flags stay listed there with the reporter and date. Admins who weren't on the sail can open the debrief in read-only form to review them.
Gear flags are a lightweight heads-up, not a maintenance workflow — there's no status or assignee to manage. If a flag warrants taking the boat out of service, set her status to maintenance above.
Skipper requirements depend on certifications
The "minimum skipper certification level" only means something once you've defined certifications and granted endorsements. Set those up under Certifications & endorsements.