Glossary

A quick reference for the words you'll see throughout Zeil.

Account — Your global Zeil identity (email and login). Shared across every club you belong to.

Achievement (badge) — Recognition a member earns automatically from club history — completed sails, debrief notes, credentials, courses. Many badges have Bronze, Silver, and Gold levels; clubs also earn shared milestones. Admins can grant badges manually for history from before the club joined Zeil. Badges award Fathoms but never affect what you're allowed to do.

Admin (administrator) — A membership role that can manage a club's fleet, members, certifications, availability, announcements, and settings.

Announcement — A club-wide notice posted by an admin. Can be pinned and targeted to all members or admins only.

Availability window — A span of time when a boat is open for booking. May be recurring or one-off. A reservation must fall fully within a boat's availability windows; a boat with no availability configured is unrestricted.

Blackout — A period that closes an otherwise-available boat (maintenance, events, weather).

Boat — An individual vessel in the fleet, belonging to a boat class, with its own specs, crew rules, and status.

Boat class — A type of boat (make/model). Holds shared specs; endorsements can be granted per class.

Certification — A credential your club recognizes, with a level and an optional expiry. Granted to members by admins.

Club (organization) — A sailing school or yacht club on Zeil, reached at its own slug.zeilapp.com address.

Crew — The people aboard a sail. Each has a state (invited, requested, confirmed, declined, removed, standby); only confirmed crew count toward requirements.

Course — A sailing-school offering with a schedule of sessions, materials, and instructors. Published courses appear on a club's public schedule; students register and can be awarded one or more certifications on completion — a combined class awards whichever of them the student passed.

Endorsement — Permission to skipper a specific boat or a whole boat class. Granted by admins.

Enrollment — Your registration in a course. Moves through pending (awaiting approval), enrolled, completed, declined, or withdrawn.

Fathoms — Zeil's participation points. Earned in flat amounts for completed sails, debrief notes, credentials, and courses — plus badge bonuses — and never scaled by duration, distance, or conditions. Your total sets an honorific community rank, from Deckhand up to Old Salt, that never decays and grants no permissions. See Achievements & Fathoms.

Guest — A non-member invited onto one specific sail by its skipper, an admin, or confirmed crew. Guests confirm by signing a waiver and get only that sail's page, not access to the club. Boats allow guests only when an admin sets a guest limit.

Member — Someone who belongs to a club. Also the basic (non-admin) role.

Membership — Your link to a particular club, carrying your role, certifications, and endorsements there.

Open sail — A sail with a seat still free that you could ask to join. They're grouped under Open sails on the club calendar and on the Crew page.

Reservation (sail) — A booking of a boat for a time window. Moves through draft, confirmed, completed, and cancelled. See Reservation states.

Sail Brief — An AI-written advisory generated before a sail from the forecast, boat, crew, and local-knowledge notes. Advisory only.

Skipper — The person responsible for sailing the boat. Must be eligible for that boat (endorsement + sufficient, unexpired certification).

Slug — The short name in a club's web address (slug.zeilapp.com). Courses also have a slug, used in their public link (/courses/<slug>).

Standby list — The first-come, first-served waitlist for a sail, joined either by a member when the sail is full or by the organizer putting a pending request there instead of deciding on it outright. When a confirmed crew member drops out, the first person on standby who's free at that time is automatically confirmed onto the crew and notified; anyone already committed to an overlapping sail is skipped but keeps their place in line.

Student — A lightweight membership role for people who register for a club's courses. Can browse courses and see My courses, but not book sails or crew.

Take the helm — Claiming a sail that has lost its skipper. Open to any member eligible for that boat while the club's grace window runs; it makes them the lead skipper and confirms the sail. See Reservation states.

Waiver — The agreement people sign when they register: guests from their personal sail link to confirm their spot aboard, and — if the club requires them — students when registering for a course and new members when accepting an invitation to join. Club admins write and version the text under Admin → Waivers.