Building your crew

Most sails need more than one person. Zeil helps you assemble a crew that meets the boat's requirements before you head out.

Two ways to crew up

Inviting crew

When you organize a sail, search the member directory and invite people to join. Each person you invite gets a spot they can accept or decline.

The search only offers people who aren't already involved: anyone invited, requested, confirmed, or skippering the sail is left out of the results. Someone who declined or was removed still shows up, so you can invite them again. Students (course-only memberships) aren't sailing crew and don't appear in the search.

Requesting to join

If a sail still has an open seat, you can request to join — whether it's still a draft being assembled or already confirmed. Confirming a sail locks in its plan, not its crew list, so a confirmed sail keeps taking crew until every seat is filled. Find sails looking for crew on the Crew page, or under Open sails on the club calendar — where you can tap Join on the card to request a spot on the spot. You can also open a sail and tap Ask to join on its own page. And you don't have to go looking: each morning Zeil emails you a roundup of the sails posted the day before, each linking straight to its page — that's the New sails daily category in your notification preferences. While the request is pending, the sail shows Pending approval; the organizer can approve (you're on the crew), decline the request, or put it on stand-by if they're not ready to decide. If approval would double-book you against another sail you're requested, on standby, or confirmed on, Zeil pulls you off that other sail automatically rather than blocking the approval — see One sail at a time.

• Not ready to decide? Instead of approving or declining right away, the organizer can tap Stand-by to put your request straight onto the standby list — the same waitlist a full sail's self-serve joiners use. This isn't only for a full boat: an organizer can do it even with an open seat, in which case that seat (or another one already open) is filled right away — possibly by someone else further along the waitlist. Your place in line is set by when you first asked to join, not by when the organizer got around to deciding.
• Changed your mind? Tap Withdraw next to the pending request. The request disappears and the organizer is told no action is needed. You can request again later if the sail still has open spots.
• Request declined? Your row shows Not this time — but a decline isn't final. Tap Request again to put in a fresh request, as long as the sail is still open for crew.

These moves travel by email too: the organizer hears when you request to join, withdraw a request, or respond to an invite, and you hear whether your request was approved, declined, or put on stand-by. That's the Crew activity category in your notification preferences (crew invites themselves are a separate category).

Dropping out of a confirmed sail

Already confirmed but can't make it after all? Open the sail and tap Drop out on your own row — no need to ask the organizer to remove you.

• The seat frees up. The first person on the standby list fills it automatically, and if confirmed crew falls below the boat's minimum, a confirmed sail reverts to draft. See Meeting the boat's requirements.
• It's not final. You can ask to join again later while the sail still has open spots.

Removing someone from the crew

Plans change on the organizing side too. The sail's lead skipper or a club admin can take someone off the crew — an unanswered invite or a confirmed seat alike — with the Remove button on that person's row.

• They're told. The removed member is notified in the app and by email. If an admin removes someone from a sail they don't skipper, the skipper is notified as well, so a vanished seat never goes unexplained.
• It's not a ban. A removed member can be re-invited, or ask to join again while the sail still has open spots.
• The seat frees up. Removing a confirmed member works exactly like them dropping out: the first person on the standby list fills the seat automatically, and if confirmed crew still falls below the boat's minimum, a confirmed sail reverts to draft.
• Pending requests are different. A requested row is answered with Approve, Decline, or Stand-by, not Remove. And once a sail is cancelled or completed, its crew list is part of the record and can no longer change.

Moving someone to another sail

To balance two boats, an admin — or the lead skipper of either sail — can move a crew member from one reservation straight onto another with the Move button next to Remove on their row. Search for the destination by boat name and pick a sail; the move happens immediately, landing them as confirmed crew with no invite or approval step on their end.

• Who can do it. A club admin, or the lead skipper of the sail they're leaving or the one they're joining — wider than who can invite or remove, since a cross-boat rebalance often isn't either skipper's own sail alone.
• They're told, not asked. The moved member is notified in-app and by email that they're now confirmed on the new sail. Either sail's lead skipper is notified too, if they weren't the one who made the move.
• The same limits apply. The destination needs an open seat under the boat's maximum crew, and neither sail can already be cancelled or completed. A move that would double-book the member against an unrelated overlapping sail is refused.
• The vacated seat behaves like a removal. On the sail they left, the first person on the standby list fills the seat automatically, and if confirmed crew falls below the boat's minimum, that sail reverts to draft — the same as removing someone.

Crew states

Each person on a crew list is in one of these states:

Only confirmed crew count toward the boat's requirements. Standby members are shown in their own box on the sail, not in the crew list.

The standby list

When a sail's confirmed crew has reached the boat's maximum, you can't request to join — but you can put your name on the standby list:

A few details worth knowing:

• Standby members don't count toward the boat's crew requirements — only a promotion to confirmed does.
• A promotion never double-books you. If it's your turn but you're already skipper or confirmed crew on an overlapping sail, you're skipped, not dropped — you keep your place in line, and you're back in the running if your conflict clears before the next spot opens.
• The Standby box shows the whole waitlist in order, so everyone can see who's next.
• The sail's lead skipper and anyone already invited, requested, or confirmed can't join standby.
• Because a promotion refills the seat immediately, a full sail that loses one crew member usually stays confirmed instead of reverting to draft.
• The list isn't only for full sails: an organizer reviewing a pending request can put it here directly instead of approving or declining — see Requesting to join.

Meeting the boat's requirements

Every boat has crew rules set by the club:

• A minimum and maximum crew size.
• A required number of qualified skippers aboard.

A sail can only be confirmed when:

• Confirmed crew is at least the boat's minimum and no more than its maximum, and
• Enough confirmed crew are eligible skippers for that boat.

Reaching your crew

On a sail's detail page (the skipper card and each crew row) and on the Crew page (the member roster and members looking to sail), Zeil shows quick call and email buttons next to each member's name. Tap call to dial their phone or email to start a message, handy when you need to coordinate a pickup or a change of plan.

A button only appears for the details that member has filled in: no phone number on their profile means no call button. Add your own phone number under Your profile so crewmates can reach you.

The crew chat

Every sail also has its own crew chat on the reservation page — a group thread for the people aboard, so coordinating the outing doesn't have to move off to email or a messaging app.

• Who's in it. The lead skipper and everyone invited or confirmed on the crew — invitees can join the conversation before they've even accepted. Any guests on the sail — invited or confirmed — are in it too, reading and posting from their own sail page; their messages are labelled (guest) in the thread. Nobody else sees the thread: not pending requesters, standby members, people who declined or were removed, or admins who aren't on the sail. Leaving the sail means leaving the chat.
• Catching up. A New divider marks the messages posted since your last visit. Press Enter to send; messages can be up to 2,000 characters.
• Email, without the flood. New messages also reach you by email — but throttled to at most one email per sail every 15 minutes. The first message after a quiet spell is emailed right away; anything posted soon after is bundled into the next round-up, which links straight back to the chat.
• Muting. Tap the bell icon at the top of the chat to silence a single sail's thread — it changes to a slashed bell while muted, and the chat itself keeps working. Tap it again to unmute. To stop crew-chat emails across all your sails, turn off Crew chat messages in your notification preferences.
• After the sail. The chat stays open on a completed sail for post-sail chatter. On a cancelled sail it closes: you can still read the thread, but no new messages can be posted.

Bringing a guest aboard

Some boats let you bring a non-member guest — someone who isn't part of the club — along for a sail. This is available only when your club's admin has given the boat a guest limit; if guests aren't enabled for that boat, you won't see the option.

If the boat allows guests, the skipper, an admin, or any confirmed crew on that sail can invite one:

If a guest hasn't responded yet — the email got lost, or their link is about to expire — the skipper, an admin, or any confirmed crew on that sail can tap Resend next to their name in the Guests box. This sends a brand-new link (the old one stops working) that's valid for another 7 days. Resend only appears while the guest is still invited; once they've confirmed, the control is gone.

A guest is not a club member — they get only that one sail page, not access to the rest of Zeil. The Guests box itself is visible to the skipper, admins, and confirmed crew on the sail. Capacity is checked again when the guest signs: if the boat has filled in the meantime, they're told there's no seat left.

The guest's sail page also includes the sail's crew chat: an invited or confirmed guest can read the thread and post in it, so "meet at dock B" reaches them directly instead of through the skipper. Their messages appear to the crew labelled (guest).

Email is a guest's only channel, so Zeil keeps them posted there: a confirmation with the meeting details once they sign the waiver, a reminder before the sail, a cancellation notice if the sail is called off, a nudge if their invite is about to expire unanswered, and a thank-you afterwards. New chat messages reach them by email too, throttled the same way as for members — at most one email per sail every 15 minutes, linking back to their sail page. Guests have no notification preferences, so the chat's bell icon on their page is their one switch for those emails.

Who can skipper

Skippering a boat may require an endorsement and a minimum certification level. Inviting someone as skipper doesn't override those rules — they must be eligible for that boat. See Certifications & skipper status to understand eligibility, and the skipper requirement on each boat.