Marine AI Copilot™

The guide

How the parts of Marine AI Copilot fit together, and how to set each one up. The information icon at the top of every page in the app gives the short version; this is the long one. It changes as the app does, so the version you read is the current one. Last revised for version 1.1, October 2026.

Your boats and their equipment

Everything in the app belongs to a boat. The home page shows the active boat, and Switch boat changes it. Your Boats opens the configuration page: the boats and their equipment, procedure generation and editing, settings and data management.

A boat is a short form: its name, dimensions and a description. Example boats are provided to clone and edit. The equipment is where the detail lives, and it is the source the AI features draw on when they write for your boat. Add a piece of equipment by choosing its category, then either photograph it, a wide view and a close-up of the manufacturer's plate, and let the app fill in the make, model and serial number for you to check, or type the details by hand.

Two fields on the equipment record matter later. How many aboard is the count of identical units on one record: twin engines are one record with a count of 2, and every maintenance task on that record covers both. Hours tracked marks engines, generators, pumps and gears whose maintenance comes due by hours run; it adds the record to Update hours under DIY Maintenance.

Procedures, and what they use

A procedure is a step-by-step checklist. Operating procedures live under Operations, maintenance procedures under DIY Maintenance. Generate one for your boat under Your Boats, Generate procedures: choose Maintenance Procedure or Operating Procedure, tick the equipment it concerns, say what it should do, and the AI writes it for that equipment. Or write one by hand under Edit maintenance procedures. Either way the steps are yours to edit, reorder and reword.

A maintenance procedure also lists what it uses: the oil, filters, impellers, belts and the like, each as a type from the ship's inventory with the quantity for one unit of equipment. A task on twin engines takes twice as much, and the app does the multiplying. This list is the one place requirements are stated. Every task scheduled on the procedure reads it: the inventory's needed figures come from it, the shopping list is built from it, and completing the procedure draws these quantities down.

A type is the thing, not the brand: "Straight 40 weight motor oil", with the acceptable brands and part numbers noted on the inventory item itself. Any acceptable brand satisfies the quantity; use one brand per service. The chooser offers every type on the phone, whichever boat it was filed under, so a generator on the yacht and the engine on the tender can share one store of oil.

Running a procedure: open it, choose Standard (tap any item, in any order) or Aircraft style (one item at a time, check, skip or note each), work through it, and tap Log. The run goes into the ship's log, and if the procedure is scheduled, the task is completed at the same time.

Ship's log books

A general log book, a maintenance log, and a log book for each voyage if you like. Every entry is stamped with the date, the time and the boat's position, course and speed from the phone's GPS; you add depth, wind, sea state, visibility, temperatures and remarks. Completed procedures are recorded in the entry with their readings and notes. Create a voyage log book before departure and make it the active one; entries go there until you choose another.

Any log book can be viewed by date, exported to PDF or printed in one step. Archived log books stay readable. The log is a permanent record of the owner's due diligence: for new crew, for insurers, at resale, and for charter compliance.

Ship's inventory

Everything aboard that is not equipment, in categories: Spare Parts, Hardware, Maintenance Consumables, Tools, Ship's Stores, Miscellaneous, Safety Equipment, and any you add. Each item has a name, a category, a place, a quantity on hand, an optional quantity to keep aboard, a unit, acceptable brands and part numbers, and a photo if you want one.

A place is two parts: the area, such as the engine room or the center console, and the stowage within it, such as the red toolbox or the seat locker. Many items share a place. Areas are the names their places share: rename an area and every place in it follows; remove a place and the items in it go too, because an item is always where its place is.

Cataloguing from photos. Add inventory names a place, then takes two photographs: a wide view of the room showing the locker, box or hatch, so anyone can find it, and the open stowage showing what is inside. One photo will do. List what's here sends the photos to the AI, which proposes the items, counts and categories it sees, with a Safety tick for anything you would reach for in an emergency. Untick what is not there, correct what is wrong, and Save. The AI names what it reads on the labels; you can rename an item to the type it is and move the brand to the Brands line.

Finding things. The search box on the inventory page answers "where is the…" across everything. The Places page lists every place with what is in it. The red Safety gear button on the home page maps where the safety equipment and emergency gear is stowed, by area, for anyone aboard. The Short list shows what is needed beyond what is on hand.

Keep aboard is the minimum to carry, for types no procedure consumes: life jackets, fuses, cans of fuel treatment. For a type a procedure uses, the schedule sets the needed quantity instead and the field is locked.

With more than one boat on the phone, an item can be stowed aboard another boat: the item page asks Aboard, then Area and Stowage from that boat's names, and the location reads boat, area, stowage wherever the item is shown. A tender's spares usually live on the yacht.

DIY maintenance schedule

DIY Maintenance is the hub: Procedures, Schedule, Fleet, Update hours, Maintenance Report, Shopping list. The scope is the work a competent crew can do aboard with what is normally carried; heavier work goes to the yard, and the app never replaces the maker's manuals.

A task is one procedure on one piece of equipment, and how often. Add task under Schedule: pick the procedure, pick the equipment record it serves, then say how often, by the calendar (every so many days, weeks, months or years), by hours run (every so many hours), or both, in which case whichever comes first counts. The intervals are yours, taken from your maker's manuals; the app never supplies an interval of its own. Then say when it was last done, the date and the hours, so the first due date is right. A task can also be a one-off on a date.

Two clocks, never reconciled. The schedule shows each task's due date and, for hours-based tasks, the hours remaining or overdue. The app does not guess a date from an hours figure or the other way round: it tells you both, and whichever arrives first is the one that matters. Tasks read OVERDUE when either clock has passed and DUE SOON when either is close.

Completing a task. Run the procedure and log it, and the task is completed: the work is recorded, the inventory is drawn down by what the procedure uses, and the next due date and hours are set from the completion. If the procedure serves several equipment records, the app asks which one before the run. For work done by a yard, or done before you had the app, Mark task completed on the task page records it with a date and notes.

What the task needs. The task page shows what the procedure uses, multiplied by the units on the record, against what is on hand, and the Short list and the shopping list pick up anything missing.

Engine hours

Hours are kept per unit: a record with two engines has two readings, and a task comes due on the higher one. Update hours lists every record with Hours tracked on. For each unit, Read the meter photographs the meter or takes a photo from your library and the AI reads the figure, or you type the total; Save records it. On a mechanical meter a drum caught between two digits reads as the lower.

A unit with a broken or missing meter can be logged instead: Start and Stop keep the running total, or Add hours adds a session by hand. A unit can follow another's meter, for a gearbox or a pump driven off an engine. A replaced meter is recorded with the hours at replacement, so the new meter's figure plus the offset is the true total. The current reading is shown with its source on every unit.

Reminders

Settings, under Maintenance reminders: Remind me by None, Notifications on this phone, Calendar, or both. Notifications arrive a week before and on the day a task is due, scheduled by the phone itself; no server and no phone number are involved. Calendar places each due date in your default calendar as an all-day event with the same two alerts and the parts needed in the event's notes, and moves the event when the work is recorded. The default is set under the phone's Settings, Calendar, Default Calendar; if that calendar belongs to an account whose calendars are switched off, the phone has no default and no events are written. Calendar access is asked for only if you choose it, and can be withdrawn in the phone's settings.

Hours-based tasks cannot be reminded by date, since the date is unknown. When a task's hours remaining fall to the hours threshold, 15 by default, adjustable in Settings, a series of reminders begins: one at once and one a week for four weeks more, until the work is recorded. Tapping a notification opens the task.

A fresh install starts with reminders off. After a restore from backup the app removes every reminder and calendar event it made and builds them again from the restored data and settings.

The report, the shopping list and the restock forecast

Maintenance Report: every scheduled task by the equipment it serves, with last done, next due, hours remaining and what is short of parts. With more than one boat on the phone it covers the fleet, each heading naming its boat; switch All boats off for one boat. Export it to PDF or print it.

Shopping list, with more than one boat, begins with the boats it covers: the active boat is ticked to begin with and All boats covers the fleet. For the next services lists every type the inventory cannot cover for the next service of the tasks that use it, by type, with the quantity to buy, the acceptable brands and the equipment it is for. Needed is summed over the boats ticked, less the one count on hand. Restock forecast takes a span, so many months ahead and so many running hours, applied to each boat ticked, and totals every service that falls within the span, by the calendar or by hours, whichever counts more, less what is on hand. A four-month cruise with 500 running hours on the yacht and her tender is bunkered from this list; a charter fleet ships a season's consumables in from it. PDF, Print, and Share as plain text for the chandlery.

More than one boat

Every boat on the phone has its own equipment, procedures, schedule, log books and inventory. Four things read across them: the Fleet row under DIY Maintenance, which lists every boat's tasks in one list, overdue first, then due soon, then by date, each card naming its boat; the Maintenance Report under All boats; the Shopping list for the boats ticked; and the due counts on the DIY Maintenance tile. Opening another boat's task from the Fleet list makes that boat the active vessel first, since the task page, Update hours and the procedures work on the active boat.

Inventory types are the ship's, not a boat's: a procedure on any boat can use a type filed under another, needed on the type is the sum over every boat's tasks, and the active boat sees its own items plus every type its procedures use. The All boats switch on the inventory page widens the lists, search, the short list and the PDF to everything on the phone. The data lives on the one phone; a second phone gets a copy only by backup and restore.

Backup and restore

Your Boats, Data management. Back up all data writes one file, MCBackup followed by the date and time, ending in .zip, to a folder you choose, such as your iCloud Drive. Restore from a backup replaces what is on the phone with the file's contents: boats, equipment, procedures, log books, inventory, the schedule and settings. The app checks the file's version first. After a restore, the reminders and calendar events are rebuilt from the restored data. Log books can be archived and cleared separately.

What the AI features do, and what they send

Buttons with a gold sparkle use AI and need the Premium subscription: equipment set up from a photo, inventory catalogued from photos, hours read from a photo of the meter, procedures written for your boat, the Worldwide Cruising Guide, the Worldwide Fishing Guide with fish identification, the Navigation Aid Identifier, and Boat-Specific Q & A. The first time you use one, the app asks your permission to send what you submit, the photo you choose, the text you type, the details of your boat and selected equipment, to our server and to our AI provider, Anthropic. Nothing is sent without it, nothing is kept after the answer is returned, and the permission can be withdrawn in Settings. Everything else in the app, your boats, checklists, log books, inventory and schedule, is free, needs no account, and stays on your phone. See the Privacy Policy.

AI answers can be incomplete or mistaken. Check what the app fills in before saving it, and never rely on an AI answer in place of charts, instruments, official publications, the maker's manuals or your own judgment.

Questions

Write to support@marineaicopilot.com, or see the Support page.