The manuals are already on your boat

Mac running macOS 14 or later, and iPhone or iPad running iOS/iPadOS 17 or later. The Apple Watch companion needs watchOS 11 or later and a paired iPhone running AFTWISE. One subscription covers all of them.

From your iPhone, not the App Store. Open the Watch app, go to My Watch → Available Apps, and choose Install beside AFTWISE. There is no separate Apple Watch download to buy or find — the watch app comes with the iPhone app, and it is included on every plan. If you go looking for it in the App Store you will not find it, and nothing is wrong.

The watch needs watchOS 11 or later and stays paired to an iPhone running AFTWISE. It holds no records of its own: it shows what the iPhone last sent, marked with how current that is, and delivers anything you tap once the phone is back in range.

Start a trip that is planned for about now, and it tells you why it matched. Stop route tracking — which saves the route and leaves the trip under way, because stopping the tracking and ending a trip are two different acts. Answer the two trip prompts, with the same wording as the phone; answering on either device answers on both. Log engine hours at the dock with the Digital Crown, where a lower reading is refused and the watch tells you which number the record still holds. And log a fuel level, stamped “Recorded on Apple Watch”. Log a generator start or stop, which records that the generator ran — AFTWISE does not start or stop the machine — and appears once the boat has a generator on its equipment list. You can also answer the checklist step in front of you — it shows where the step sits in the run, what it is asking for, and a Checked button, with Fail beside it on a step that can fail, raising the same follow-up task the iPhone raises. The wrist shows one checklist at a time, the one touched last, and the step in front of you rather than the whole run; other open checklists are listed by name with the steps left in each, and a tap brings one across. Defer is on the wrist too, for 30 minutes, 1 hour or 4 hours, and the iPhone sets the reminder. A failed step is not left behind: while a step is failed the checklist is not finished, and when the other steps are answered the wrist comes back to it, marked Failed, still open, with Checked, Defer and Finish, Leave Failed; a deferred step comes back the same way, marked Put off, still open.

The watch starts and stops. It does not finish. Ending a trip records arrival, ending engine and generator hours, fuel aboard and the sea service day — and a sea service claim is built on exactly those fields. A wrist button that skipped them would fill them with silence, so the button reads End Trip on iPhone and opens the close-out there.

Yes. iCloud sync is on by default, on every plan, and it works through your own iCloud account. AFTWISE keeps a full copy of your vessel record on each of your devices and syncs it through the private iCloud database that belongs to your Apple ID, so a Mac, an iPad and an iPhone signed in to the same Apple ID hold the same record. Apple stores it, under your Apple ID and within your iCloud storage. Aftwise, LLC runs no server and holds no copy. You can turn iCloud sync off in the app if you would rather keep a device on its own.

Each device works without a signal, and changes appear on your other devices shortly after each one has signal — usually seconds, longer for photographs. Photos and documents you store in AFTWISE count against your iCloud storage, the same as anything else you keep there. Sync is not a backup: a record deleted on one device is deleted on the others, so the backup and restore tools stay on every plan and are still worth using at the start of the season. A backup is a file you keep wherever you choose, iCloud Drive included; that is separate from the record syncing between your devices.

No. One subscription is one copy of AFTWISE, on one person’s devices — their Mac, their iPad, their iPhone and their Apple Watch. A second person on their own Apple ID needs their own subscription.

In practice most boats want it that way round anyway. The record lives in your own iCloud account, under your Apple ID, and AFTWISE does not share a vessel between two Apple IDs. Two people running separate copies would be keeping two versions of the same boat — and two versions is how a record stops being worth having. One authoritative copy, on one person’s devices and backed up somewhere you can both reach it, is the arrangement that actually holds up.

iCloud sync is on by default, so a new phone signed in to the same Apple ID picks the record up once AFTWISE is installed. The first sync is the slow one, and slower still with a lot of photographs. If the old phone was your one device and it is gone, restore from your most recent backup instead.

The habit worth forming either way: make a backup at the start of the season, and again after any long session of data entry. Sync is not a backup — a record deleted by mistake is deleted everywhere — and backup and restore are on every plan and produce files you keep.

Yes. AFTWISE imports equipment, inventory, contacts and expenses from CSV, and the bundled CSV Import & Data Preparation Guide sets out exactly what each column should hold. Import into the demonstration boat first if you want to see how your data lands before committing it to your own vessel.

It is a fully populated example vessel — equipment, a maintenance schedule, trips and completed checklist runs — installed so you are not starting at an empty screen. It never counts against your vessel limit on any plan, and you can remove it whenever you like.

No. These checklists are examples to start from, not official or approved procedures. You decide what is right for your boat, your crew and your waters: change any step, add your own, or delete what does not apply. Follow your manufacturer’s instructions, the law, and your own judgment.

Because there are two kinds of due date, and AFTWISE keeps them apart. The dates under Safety, Service & Expiration Dates are reminders you set on the equipment yourself — an annual inspection, a certification renewal, an extinguisher’s replacement limit. AFTWISE never edits those. The next service shown on a maintenance history row is a different thing: it is worked out from the hour meter and the interval you chose when you logged the work, and it is the figure Alerts watches for hour-based service.

So logging a 200-hour service does not move a date you set by hand, and that is deliberate. Deciding which of your reminders a given service satisfies would be a guess, and a wrongly advanced due date hides work that is genuinely due. Change those dates yourself when you mean to; the meter-based schedule looks after itself.

People & Crew can import directly from Apple Contacts. Imported people are filed under an “Apple Import” role so they are easy to tell apart from crew you have entered deliberately, and you can promote the ones you actually sail with.

What you were doing, what you expected, what happened instead, which device and OS version, and the build number from the app footer. That combination is usually enough to reproduce a defect on the first attempt. Report a problem

Both are handled in your Apple account subscription settings, the same as any other App Store subscription — we cannot change them on your behalf. Outside the free month, Compare Plans in the app shows your plan, its renewal date and any change already scheduled, and its Change or Cancel button opens those settings. Canceling at least 24 hours before the free month ends costs nothing. Moving up starts at once; moving down takes effect at your next renewal date, so a downgrade made during the free month means the paid period starts on the lower plan. For anything about a charge, get in touch.

Your records are on your devices and in your own iCloud account, and the backups and exports you have made are files you already hold. Keep a backup somewhere sensible and the history is yours regardless of what you decide about the subscription. Ending a subscription does not delete your records: they stay on the device, and in your iCloud if sync is on, for as long as the app stays installed, and they are there when you subscribe again. Until then the app shows its subscription screen in place of the record, and a Back Up button on that screen saves one .zip of every vessel, or of one vessel at a time when you have more than one, to share from iPhone and iPad or save on the Mac. Deleting the app removes that device’s copy, so keep your own.