Rainbow’s End Manifest — Support

It keeps the whole book of your boat in one place. From your vessel’s particulars it derives the U.S. Coast Guard safety-equipment checklist for your boat — the right items, current terminology, correct citations — and lets you record where each piece is stowed. From that, it generates a passenger safety briefing for your boat, not a generic one. It carries a daily cruising log with voyages, running engine-hour totals, the miles under her keel, and fuel and water estimates, a maintenance schedule filtered to the systems you actually have — due by the calendar or the engine-hour meter, whichever comes first — and a declarable Inventory for clearing in abroad. It works offline, with optional sync through your own iCloud.

Her manifest. Open the book and tap Edit boat: her name and papers, the owners and people aboard, dimensions (LOA drives the equipment class), propulsion, heads, generator and A/C, propane, shore power and renewables, batteries, tanks with capacities, burn rates, the water maker, and the engine and generator hour-meter readings your running hours start from. Ten minutes once, and every page reshapes itself around your answers — change LOA or add a gasoline generator and watch the Gear list redraw.

Yes. Edit boat’s Vessel section takes her hull color, her identifying features (rig, canvas, davits — what a searcher or a guest would spot), and a photo, chosen through the system picker. They print on Her papers in the book — the description a float plan, a search party, or a port captain asks for. The photo is deliberately kept small (about 800 px): at that size it syncs through your iCloud, rides along in Export the book, and shows on every device — a description aid, not a wallpaper. Photos of the voyage itself go on the day’s entry in the log, not on Her papers — see “Can I put photos on a day in the log?”

The ship’s book: a leather cover that opens to paper pages — The Boat, Gear, Checklists, Log, Expenses, and Maintenance. How it reads follows the width in your hands, not the device. Held broad — an iPad or a larger iPhone turned to landscape — the sections are leather index tabs down the right edge and the book opens flat into a two-page spread. Held narrow, the pages run full width. The Index button at the foot of every page — or the section name at its head — opens The Index, the book’s contents page: every section and every page in it, a tap away, and a box to find a page by name. The foot of the page always names the page you are on, and after a link carries you to another page it offers the way back. Pages turn like a logbook’s either way (tap Next page, the back chevron, or swipe). Every page reads from your real records — nothing in the book is a picture.

The book is for reviewing the record and making the day’s entries — reading her papers, checking what’s aboard and where it’s stowed, giving the briefing, logging a quick day, a fill, work done, or a cost. The Editor is full data entry: complete forms, every field, scrolling lists, search, with its own bar for moving between topics — and The Book, leftmost on that bar, brings you home. Only one shows at a time; open the Editor from the leather tab hanging at the top of every page (it’s also the last row of the index). For a single quick edit the book floats the editor over the page instead — Edit boat on the Boat pages, Log the gear on the Gear pages, the fill editor in the Fuel Log — and Done returns you to your page. Nothing exists in only one place by accident: the book reviews; the Editor edits.

The federal items are the federal minimums — 33 CFR and 46 CFR carriage requirements for recreational vessels, each with its citation. Two honest caveats, stated in the app as well: state law can add requirements on its own waters, and a checklist is preparation for — never a substitute for — the free Coast Guard Auxiliary Vessel Safety Check. Pass one and she wears the decal.

Because the regulations changed. Since 2014 the rules classify personal flotation devices (PFDs) as wearable or throwable, and new labels use performance levels (Level 70 is the everyday wearable). Since April 2022 extinguishers count by UL rating — 5-B and 20-B — and disposable bottles expire 12 years from their stamped manufacture date. Old gear with old labels stays legal while serviceable; the app teaches the current words.

The list is derived, not fixed. Length class, propulsion, fuel, coastal versus inland waters, heads, a fixed fire system, even a gasoline generator on a diesel boat — each changes what the law requires. If something moved, something on your Boat tab changed.

Her standing declaration for clearing into another country, at the end of the Gear section: a firearms list (even “none” — that answer is itself the declaration), equipment and electronics with serials for temporary-import permits, dutiable alcohol and tobacco, medications, foodstuffs for biosecurity, and animals. Record it once in the Editor’s Gear tab; Share the list hands an official the whole thing as plain text — AirDrop it, print it, or simply show the page.

The briefing reads from the Gear tab. Check an item aboard and enter where it’s stowed — “port cockpit locker” — and the briefing’s “Where things live” section says exactly that to your guests. The MAYDAY card fills in your boat’s name, call sign, and MMSI from the Boat tab.

The skipper’s predeparture checklist, in the book’s Checklists section — its landing page offers it beside the passenger briefing, and the day’s-entry page links to both. It is drawn from your manifest, not a laminated generic: a gasoline inboard gets the blower, a diesel gets oil and cooling water, a generator brings its own strainer, a sailboat gets her rig and jacklines, a paddle craft keeps the short list. The lines print what the book already knows — the fuel and water estimates, the flare and extinguisher dates from Maintenance. Checks belong to today and reset with the date; when you log the day, the entry offers to note the tally in the journal.

The day’s work, one tap from where the book opens: Log the day, Log a fill, Log the work, and Log a cost each turn straight to that section’s entry page. The rest of the page is her papers — and the fleet row beneath Edit boat switches boats mid-read.

Start a voyage — right on the day’s-entry page or in the Editor — name it, and every entry, legs and lay days alike, collects under it until you end it. A lay day is a day aboard without getting under way (at anchor, in a marina away from home): it keeps the water estimate honest and can log generator hours. Past voyages sit collapsed with their totals — days, legs, nautical miles, engine hours — and expand for review.

Log the departure as you leave. On the day’s entry, choose Underway, fill in the date, departure time, where from and where to, the engine hours and the persons aboard, and tap Log the departure. The entry is saved as under way, and until you arrive every day at sea counts toward the voyage’s days and the water estimate.

When you get in, tap Arrived at the top of the day’s entry. The same entry opens with the arrival day already set: add the arrival time and engine hours, take the miles the watches logged, and tap Log the arrival. You can also log a whole passage at once after arriving; the Arrives stepper under the times sets the day she got in.

At each change of watch, tap Change of watch on the day’s entry (or Log the watch atop Her papers while a voyage or passage is under way). Write the time in local time or UTC and the page shows the other. Fill from GPS takes the boat’s position, or type it as you would on a chart (29 18.4 N, 94 47.2 W). Add course and speed, the wind, the sea, the barometer (millibars or inches, or tap to read the phone’s own barometer), the sky, the sails, the engine, and who kept the watch. Wind, sea, sky, sails and engine carry over from the last watch; change what’s changed.

From the second position on, the page works out the distance, speed and course made good since the last fix. Leave course and speed blank and it logs those, marked “made good.” The barometer’s three-hour trend reads in the forecasts’ words, from steady to falling very rapidly, and a quick fall is flagged. Watches never add miles or hours to the voyage; when you arrive, tap Arrived on the day’s entry, and the passage’s form offers the miles the watches logged between departure and arrival.

Enter each meter’s reading on the Editor’s Boat page and the day’s entry pre-fills “Engine hrs — start” with the running total; log the finish reading and the total moves forward. Correct the figure on the Boat page any time and the total restarts from the number you just entered. The miles under her keel work the same way: give the book the miles she’d sailed when your log began, and every logged leg adds on top — her lifetime total, on the log page.

Retired, deliberately. Duration minus engine hours claimed she was sailing whenever the engine was off — but a lunch stop on the hook is not sailing. The log now shows the leg’s honest duration and engine hours, and claims nothing more.

The search box atop the log matches voyage names, places, weather, journal text, and dates — written either way: “2026-08” and “aug 21” both find the day. While searching, matching voyages open to just their matching days, with the voyage totals still describing the whole voyage. In the book, the log’s pages read through the same dates as the ledgers: tap All at the head of the log to page through every day.

Yes, up to twelve a day. On the day’s entry before you log it, or on a logged day in the book’s log pages or on the Editor’s Log tab, tap Add photos to choose from your library, or Take a photo. The app keeps a 1,200-pixel copy and a thumbnail, about 200 KB a photo; your originals stay in the Photos app at full size. A strip of thumbnails sits under the day; tap one for the full-screen viewer, where you can swipe through the day, write a one-line caption, share a photo, or delete it (the app asks first). Deleting the day deletes its photos.

Switch on iCloud sync and they come. The book syncs the day with the names and captions of its photos; with sync on, each photo is also written to your own iCloud as its own record, and the iPad fetches it the first time you open the day there — a placeholder says “in your iCloud” until it lands. Photos taken before sync was switched on go up the next time their day is opened on the phone. With sync off, photos stay on the device that took them and the other device shows where they are. The About page shows how much space the photos take on each device.

It’s arithmetic, and it says so. A sailboat gives one motoring burn rate, and rate times logged engine hours draws each tank down. A powerboat burns very differently by how she’s driven, so she gives three figures instead — total burn, all engines together, at trawling speed, fast cruise, and wide-open throttle — and each day’s entry logs the hours at each speed (the three should total the engine hours for the leg; the form checks and says so). Each engine still keeps its own meter — skippers run one engine or the other — and the estimate splits the day’s fuel across tanks by each engine’s share of the hours. Fills add; a fill marked topped off — or a level measured from the dipstick or gauge, entered with Measure beside the tank on the Fuel Log, by quarters or in gallons — calibrates the estimate, and the math continues from there. Until a tank has been topped off or measured once, the app says “unknown” rather than guessing — and if hours are logged at a speed whose rate isn’t set, it likewise refuses to guess. The gauge always outranks the arithmetic. Fresh water works the same way, boat-wide, drawn down per logged day at your per-person rate unless an entry records its own figure.

The Gear page asks for the maximum persons she’s equipped for — that number sizes the gear (one PFD per person she might carry) and never changes with the weekend. Each log entry records the persons actually aboard for that trip, and the water estimate runs on that day’s logged crew. Days logged without a crew count fall back to the equipped-for maximum.

The books of what she costs, together under the Expenses tab of the ship’s book — behind the boat’s running total, each the same shape: its button, then the record for the dates you choose, running onto more pages as the dates need, with the entry form opening as a sheet over the page. Tap any entry to correct or delete it in the same form. The Fuel Log: every fill — date, amount, price, and the dock — which also feeds the fuel-aboard estimate. The Work Log: everything done to the boat — repairs, routine maintenance, equipment added or upgraded — who did it, where, and what it cost. The Ownership Log: what she costs at rest — the home slip and storage, insurance, registration and taxes, utilities, dues. The Cruising expenses ledger: what a voyage spends beyond the boat herself — provisions, meals ashore, fees and permits, transport ashore, and the moorings and transient slips along the way. Buttons at the head of the Expenses page jump to each ledger, and the Maintenance tab in the Editor keeps the tally: totals by month, year, and category. Every entry in every ledger can name the voyage it belongs to; the form proposes one from the date, and “none” is a real answer. Entries without a price still belong in their logs; they just don’t tally.

In the same record, a tap away. Each ledger and the log open on year to date; tap Last year, All, or Dates… at the head of the record, and every entry in those dates is there, running onto more pages as it needs. The choice carries from one ledger to the next while the app is open.

Turn the page after the voyage card in the Log. The Voyage expenses page gathers everything tagged with the voyage from all four ledgers: the total, the cost per day and per nautical mile, a breakdown by category, and the entries themselves, each a tap from its ledger. Only tagged entries count — an insurance premium that happens to fall mid-cruise is not a cost of the cruise — and entries in the voyage’s dates that carry no voyage are listed underneath with a button to assign them. Pick another voyage with the chips at the top.

It prepares the figures; you attest them. The Sea service page — Log, after the voyage expenses — tallies what the Coast Guard’s CG-719S asks per vessel: for each year, the days of service (four hours or more under way, per 46 CFR 10.107 for a vessel under 100 gross tons; the threshold can be set to eight or twelve and the hours are shown), the hours, the first and last dates, and the split by waters. A day is a calendar day; a passage spanning days credits each by its share of the hours; lay days never count. The waters — Inland, Near-coastal, Great Lakes, Oceans — are set on each day’s entry, the boat’s own setting the fallback. Gross tonnage, which the form asks, has a field on the Editor’s Boat tab. Share as text hands the summary to the share sheet shaped for copying onto the form.

Yes, as GPX. The voyage card in the Log — and the voyage’s group on the Editor’s Log tab — has Share as GPX: one file for the voyage, a track per passage, each watch that carried a position a point in UTC. The track is exactly as dense as the watches were — a four-hour schedule gives a point every four hours — because the app keeps watches, not a breadcrumb trail. Nothing leaves the device but the file you share.

The first page of the Expenses tab: the boat’s total for the dates at the top — this month, year to date, last year (the whole of the year before), all, or dates you type — with a breakdown by category and the entries themselves. It counts the three ledgers of the boat herself — fuel, work, ownership — and leaves the cruising expenses out, because groceries and a night ashore are the crew’s, not the boat’s; a chip on the page adds them in when you want the whole figure.

Tap Compare with… on the Boat expenses page. A second period sits beside the first — the same dates last year to start, or the whole of last year, or dates you type — with both totals, the difference in dollars and as a percentage, and every category side by side. Both periods count the same ledgers, cruising expenses included only when you have added them.

Yes. Export as CSV makes a spreadsheet file — date, ledger, category, description, who was paid, voyage and amount, one line per entry — and Export as PDF makes a statement: the totals by category and every entry. Both carry exactly what the page shows, the dates, the cruising choice and the comparison, and both go out through the share sheet to wherever you send them — Mail, Files, AirDrop. Entries without a price stay in their logs and out of the export.

Getting about once you have arrived: taxis and rideshares, rental cars, ferries, buses, an excursion. The ⓘ beside Category on the Cruising expenses form says what each category takes, where fuel and the home slip go instead, and how an expense joins a voyage.

The 60-day lookahead: every dated item that’s expired, overdue, or falls due within the next 60 days, sorted soonest first, each row saying how many days out or past it stands. Engine and generator items on a tracked meter can also raise the alarm by hours — a row that reads “30 hrs past” got there by the hour meter, not the calendar. It reads from the same records as the schedule below it, so entering a date once does both jobs. Unrecorded items don’t alarm — the schedule rows themselves show “Not recorded.”

What the job is. Replace: a new part or fluid on schedule, whatever the old one looks like. Inspect: look it over, and replace only what you find worn. Test: prove it works. Clean: clear it out. Exercise: work it through its range so it doesn’t seize. Service: the job the note describes. Renew: a paper, registration or coating that lapses. The date beside each item says the same — last replaced, last inspected. Where a part is looked at on one schedule and replaced on another, it has two lines with their own dates: the belts, the heat exchanger and its pencil zinc, spark plugs. The ⓘ on the schedule page says it again.

Both, once the app knows your meters. Engine and generator service items that carry an hour interval — oil at 100 hrs, fuel filters at 250, and so on — watch the running engine-hour totals kept by the log. Record a service date and the app stamps the hour-meter reading beside it (correct it if the work happened at a different reading); from then on the item comes due at whichever arrives first, the months or the hours — exactly what “100 hrs or annually” has always meant. A boat that sat all winter gets the calendar nag; a boat that crossed the Gulf in May gets the hour nag. If you haven’t set the hour-meter readings on the Editor’s Boat page, nothing changes — the schedule runs on the calendar alone, as before. Shared items like the Racor separators score against the hardest-working engine’s meter.

The mainstream conventions — engine-manufacturer schedules, marine-industry practice, and the verified document cycles (USCG documentation renewal, FCC ship station license, NOAA EPIRB registration, flare and extinguisher expirations). Items marked Hard date are legal or safety expirations; past the date, the gear doesn’t count. Everything else is a service interval, and your owner’s manuals always win.

Same reason as the Gear list: it’s derived. Twin engines get port and starboard lines; each Racor-type separator gets its own line; a generator, air conditioning, a sea chest, a composting head each bring their own items; sailboats get the rig category and powerboats don’t.

No account and no server of ours — everything lives on your device, and nothing ever reaches us. The one optional exception is iCloud sync (below), which keeps a copy in your own iCloud, readable only by your Apple ID. See the privacy policy, which is short because there is little to disclose. Deleting the app deletes the data on that device; a synced copy stays in your iCloud until you remove it.

Three safety nets now. If iCloud sync is on, a new device signed into your Apple ID picks the fleet up from your iCloud as soon as you switch sync on there. Beyond that: an iCloud Backup (or an encrypted computer backup) of your device includes the app’s data like any other app’s — restore a new phone from backup, or migrate with Apple’s Quick Start, and the whole book comes with it. And Export the book on the Boat page writes everything — every boat, her gear, dates, and log — to one file you control: save it anywhere, and Import a book brings it back. A phone lost with none of the three takes its data with it, so export after a good voyage the way you’d photograph a paper logbook. Voyage photos are the one thing Export the book does not carry: it records which photos a day had, not the pictures. A device backup includes them like any other app’s files; a fresh install from an export shows placeholders where the photos were.

Yes — through your own iCloud, and only if you ask. In Edit boat, under iCloud sync, switch on Sync her books across your devices on each device. Every device signed into the same Apple ID then keeps the same fleet: edits push a few seconds after the pen lifts and arrive when the other device next opens the app (or on Sync now). The copy lives in your iCloud’s private database — no account with us, no server of ours, and we cannot read it. The privacy policy said it would describe any online feature plainly before it shipped; its iCloud sync section is that description.

The newer edit keeps that boat’s whole book. Sync merges boat by boat: whichever device wrote in a boat’s book most recently carries her, entirely — it does not stitch two books’ edits together line by line. In practice the window is small because devices sync within seconds of an edit; the habit that makes it a non-issue is finishing your entry on one device before picking up the other. Different boats never collide, and a boat deleted on one device stays deleted — unless the other edited her afterward, in which case the edit wins and she’s back aboard. One more habit worth keeping: update both devices together. A device still on an older version that edits a boat saves her in the older shape, without the ledger and the photo lists that version never knew about.

They’re siblings from the same shop and share the family look, but each stands alone. Anchoring sizes and manages your ground tackle; Manifest keeps the book of the boat. The Gear tab will happily remind you that an anchor is not federally required equipment — and that prudence disagrees.