Rainbow’s End Logbook — Support

It keeps one voyage as a book: the boat, the dates and who was aboard on the cover, then a day at a time inside — where you left, where you arrived or where she lay, a note, up to six pictures, a position if you marked one — beside a small ledger of what the voyage cost. At the end, Share makes a PDF of the whole book. It works entirely offline.

Both, on the same screens. A logbook is one voyage. When she is chartered, switch on She’s chartered and note the company and the base. When she is your own, leave that off; her name is remembered for the next logbook, so the second voyage starts with it filled in.

On the Logbooks screen under Sample: a weekend on Galveston Bay aboard the ketch Rainbow, with two passages, a lay day, three pictures and a small ledger. The sample itself is read-only, so it stays a worked example. Copy the sample as a new logbook makes a copy of your own to change or delete.

A passage is a day she moved: where you left, where you arrived, and the nautical miles if you know them. A lay day is a day she stayed — at anchor, on a mooring, in a slip — and needs only the place. A day that both arrived and stayed is one passage; the next morning at the same place is a lay day. Two passages on one date are two days in the book.

No. Miles are optional and are yours to enter, from the chart plotter or your own reckoning. The voyage’s total counts only the passages that have miles, and says so — “3 of 5 passages” — rather than pretending the blank ones were zero.

It reads the phone’s GPS once, at your tap, and writes the position into that day as degrees and decimal minutes, the way a chart reads it. On a passage each place has its own Mark position; a lay day has one. Tap it at the anchorage, not underway, if you want the spot you slept. Clear removes it. Nothing is read in the background and nothing is sent anywhere.

The phone needs a view of the sky, and the first fix can take up to half a minute offshore. Try again on deck. If Location is off for the app, the phone’s Settings will turn it on; Logbook asks for it only when in use.

The first date of the voyage not yet written. When every date has a day, the next one is the day after the last. Change the date on the day itself if you are writing out of order.

Up to six a day, from your photo library or the camera, each with a caption if you like. Each one is copied into the app at 1,200 pixels on its long side, with a small thumbnail, and kept in the app’s own folder on this device. Your original in the photo library is untouched. The About page says how much space the pictures are taking.

Open it from the day’s strip. The viewer swipes between the day’s pictures, takes a caption, shares the one you are looking at through the share sheet, and deletes it on a second tap. Deleting a day deletes its pictures; deleting a logbook deletes them all.

Not in this version. The logbook and its pictures live on the device that wrote them. Sharing the PDF is the way to carry the whole book somewhere else.

Provisions, meals ashore, fuel, fees and permits, transport ashore, moorings and transient dockage, and other. Leave out the charter fee and the airfare, or put them under Other if you want the whole holiday in one figure.

So you can note a free stop, such as an anchorage that cost nothing. A line with no amount stays in the ledger and out of every sum; the Expenses screen counts them separately.

No. The ledger is your own record of what the voyage cost. It has no people, no shares and no settlement.

The total over the days aboard: first day to last, inclusive. A weekend of three days with $300 spent reads $100 a day, whether or not every day has a line.

Share, then Make the PDF logbook. The app builds it on your phone — a cover with the boat, the dates and the crew; a page for each day with its notes and pictures; the ledger with its donut — and hands it to the share sheet. Mail it, AirDrop it, text it or drop it in Files, as you like. Nothing leaves the phone until you send it.

The pictures. They print at the size they are kept, so a week with six pictures a day makes a file of a few tens of megabytes: fine for AirDrop, Mail and Files, sometimes too big for a text message. Fewer pictures on the day means a smaller book.

Not in this version; there is no viewer app and no sharing by code. The book is the skipper’s, and everyone gets it as a PDF when it is done.

It moves the voyage to Past voyages and makes it read-only, so a stray tap cannot change it. Reopen it from the Logbook screen to change something. A closed logbook can still be shared.

At the foot of the day, Delete this day, tapped twice. On the Logbooks screen, swipe a logbook to the left and tap Delete; the app asks once before it goes. The same button sits on the Logbook screen beside Close, and on Details. The pictures go with it. Neither can be undone.

Not here, on purpose. Logbook is the book of the voyage. The book of the boat — the Coast Guard’s gear list, the log with engine hours and tanks, the maintenance schedule, the watch log — is Rainbow’s End Manifest, from the same company.

Yes. In landscape above about 900 points the Logbook, Expenses and Details screens use two panes — the summary and the donut on the left, the days on the right. In portrait, and on the phone, everything is one column with the summary pinned at the top.