Privacy Policy
The short version: Rainbow’s End Monitor collects nothing. It reads a boat’s anchor watch that the boat’s owner chose to share with you, using a code the owner gave you; your own position is used on your phone to point the arrow at the boat and goes nowhere. There is no account, no server of ours, and nothing to sign into.
What the app is
A boat running Rainbow’s End Anchoring can share her anchor watch with crew by an eight-character crew code. Enter the code in this app and you see the watch — the fence around the anchor, where the boat lies, the trail of where she has swung, and an alarm on your phone if she breaks out of the fence or falls silent — and you can find your way back to her behind an arrow that shows her bearing and distance. Without a code, the app can show you only its built-in demo.
What the app reads, and from where
The boat’s owner publishes one small record to Apple’s iCloud, in the public part of the app’s own storage, under a name computed from the code and encrypted with a key made from the code. When you enter the code, this app computes the same name, fetches the record from Apple, and decrypts it on your phone. The record holds the fence, the boat’s position and GPS accuracy, how far she has ranged, whether she is inside or outside the fence, a short recent trail, the time of the report, the boat’s name and hull color, the version of the boat’s app, and — if the owner added one — a photo of the boat, also encrypted. Nobody without the code can read any of it, including us. Reading needs no iCloud account on your phone. The boat also writes two small records beside it: an event, whose one unencrypted field is the kind of her latest change — alarm, swing, inside, quiet, or ended — kept readable so that a notification can say it, and a heartbeat every five minutes. Neither says which boat, or where.
This app writes no records to iCloud; the only thing it saves there is the notification subscriptions described under Notifications. It cannot change or delete the boat’s record, disarm the watch, or affect the boat in any way; only the boat’s own device can do those things. The record belongs to the boat’s owner and is governed by Rainbow’s End Anchoring’s privacy policy and Apple’s iCloud terms.
Your location
“Find the boat” and the optional map layer use your phone’s GPS and compass to point at the boat and tell you how far away she is. The app asks for location permission only when you open “Find the boat” or switch the map on, and only “while using the app”. Your position is used on your phone and is never transmitted, stored by us, or shared with the boat: the boat’s owner never learns where you are. The blue dot on the map is drawn by Apple Maps on your phone from the same permission. If you never open “Find the boat” or the map, the app never asks for your location.
What stays on your phone
So that tomorrow’s dinghy run needs no retyping, and so the arrow still works on a dock with no signal, the app keeps a few things in its own storage on your phone: the codes you have joined with the boat’s name and hull color, and for each code the boat’s last known position and anchor, the time of that report, and the decrypted photo if there was one. It also remembers your choice of feet or meters and whether the map is on. None of this leaves the phone. “Leave this watch” or “Forget this boat” removes a code and what was kept under it; deleting the app removes everything.
Notifications
The app can tell you about the boat while it is closed. To do that it asks to send notifications, and — only for this — it subscribes, through Apple’s iCloud, to changes in the boat’s event and heartbeat records. Apple delivers those notifications to your phone; no server of ours is involved, and nothing about you is sent to the boat or to us. Subscriptions belong to a signed-in iCloud user, so alerts with the app closed need this phone signed into iCloud; reading the watch does not, and the Join screen says which is which. The app also schedules one local notification, fifteen minutes ahead, that fires if it hears nothing from the boat in that time; if you allow Critical Alerts when iOS asks, that one notice sounds through the silent switch and Do Not Disturb. “Leave this watch” and “Forget this boat” remove the subscriptions.
What the app does not do
Rainbow’s End Monitor contains no analytics, no advertising, no tracking of any kind, and no third-party data-collection software. It has no account system and no server. It does not read your contacts, photos, or anything else on your device. The map tiles come from Apple Maps under Apple’s terms; the app sends Apple only what any map view sends to draw the area on screen. The demo watch under the code DEMO-DEMO is built into the app and touches no network at all.
Purchases
The app is free and contains no purchases.
Children
The app collects no data from anyone, children included.
Changes to this policy
If a future version of the app ever changes any of the above, this policy will be updated first, with the effective date above revised, and the change described plainly rather than buried.
September 17, 2026: for version 1.2.0, the first release with notifications: added the Notifications section — alerts with the app closed, delivered by Apple from subscriptions on the boat’s records, and the fifteen-minute notice, which can be a Critical Alert — and named the one unencrypted field beside the record, the kind of the boat’s latest event, including “swing”. Corrected “never writes to iCloud”: the app saves notification subscriptions there, and no records. Alerts with the app closed need this phone signed into iCloud; watching does not.
Contact
Questions about this policy: support@RainbowsEndMarine.com.
Rainbow’s End Monitor is an aid to judgment, not a substitute for it: it reports what the boat last said, and only the boat can act.