Booking a sail
Reserve a boat for a time window, snap to 15-minute slots, and handle conflicts.
Booking a sail means reserving a boat for a window of time. Here's how it works and what to expect.
Not sure when a boat is free?
Start from the club calendar instead. Pick a day and it shows you every boat with time left, with chips for the gaps that are actually open — tap one and the booking form opens with the time already filled in.
Make a reservation
Pick a boat, day, and time
Start a new reservation and choose an active boat. Then set your sail the way skippers think about it: pick a day, a start time, and a duration — Zeil works out the end time for you.
- Day — tap Today, Tomorrow, or any of the next two weeks; use More to open a calendar for dates further out. Past days are disabled.
- Start time — pick from the half-hour chips, or use the ±15m nudge for a quarter-hour. Slots that have already passed today can't be chosen.
- Duration — choose 2h, 3h, 4h (the default for a typical sail), 6h, or All day, and fine-tune by ±15m.
Days and times in the picker follow your club's timezone, not your phone's — so if you're traveling, what you see and book still matches what your club expects.
Each strip scrolls sideways when there's more than fits on screen — swipe on touch or a trackpad, or drag with the mouse on desktop — so you can reach a day or time outside the visible window without tapping the ±15m nudge over and over. A plain click still selects the chip you land on.
A summary card shows the day, time range, and total duration at a glance, including an "ends tomorrow" note when a sail crosses midnight.
If you're planning to skipper the sail yourself, the boat picker flags any boat you're not cleared to skipper yet ("Not cleared yet"), with the reason shown when you select it. You can still save the draft on such a boat — an admin will need to clear you (or reassign the skipper) before the sail can be confirmed. See Certifications & skipper status.
Admins: booking for another skipper
Club admins see an extra Skipper picker on the booking form and can create the sail with another member at the helm (leave it on Me to skipper yourself). The usual clearance rules apply to whoever is chosen — an ineligible member is rejected with the reason. The assigned skipper is notified in the app and by email, so they know to review the plan and invite crew.
Times snap to 15 minutes
Pick a start time and duration from the quick options, then use the fine-tune
nudges to adjust in 15-minute steps. Everything lines up to the quarter hour
(:00, :15, :30, :45), and Zeil enforces this when it saves.
Confirm the window
If the slot is free, your reservation is created. If the boat needs a skipper, you'll sort out crew and skipper next — see Build your crew.
Availability and blackouts
The club calendar shows the availability windows your club's administrators have set for each boat — the times a boat can be out. Your booking must fall fully within an availability window; if it doesn't, Zeil rejects the time and asks you to check the calendar for open times. (A boat whose club hasn't set up any availability can be booked at any time.) During a blackout (for maintenance or a club event) a boat can't be booked at all. If a booking won't go through, the usual causes are a time outside the boat's availability, a blackout, a boat in maintenance, or a slot that's already taken. See Availability for how admins set this up.
If your club runs a sailing school, a boat booked for an on-water course session shows on the club calendar as a hatched Course block. Like a blackout, it means the boat is unavailable for that time — it's not a sail you can open or join.
No double-booking
A boat can hold only one reservation for any given moment. Zeil prevents overlapping bookings on the same boat at the database level — it's not possible to slip two sails into the same slot.
The same rule protects people: a member can't be committed to two sails at the same time. If you're already the lead skipper or confirmed crew on a sail that overlaps, booking another one is rejected — pick a time when you're free. An admin booking for another skipper gets the same answer if that skipper is already on a sail at that time. Only real commitments block your time: pending invites, join requests, and standby spots can overlap freely.
Slot just taken?
If someone books the same boat and time a moment before you, Zeil tells you that time is already booked on this boat. Pick a different time or boat and try again — nothing about your account is wrong.
When a sail is full
A sail whose confirmed crew has reached the boat's maximum can't take more requests to join. You can still add yourself to its standby list — if a confirmed crew member drops out, the first person on standby is automatically moved onto the crew and notified. See The standby list.
Draft vs. confirmed
A new reservation usually starts as a draft while you assemble the crew and meet the boat's requirements. Once the crew and skipper requirements are met, it becomes confirmed. For the full lifecycle, see Reservation states.
Editing or cancelling
You can manage a sail you've booked — edit it while it's still a draft, adjust crew, or cancel it — from Manage your sails.