Rainbow’s End Watch Bill — Support

It plans the crew’s watches, tells the person on deck who to wake and when, and records each handover. The plan goes to each crew phone as a code on your screen, which they scan with the free Watch Bill Crew app. It works offline.

On the Voyages screen: Open the sample race. Four crew on the rolling watch, set so its watches began an hour ago, so the nav station is live the moment it opens. The sample sets no alarms.

Tap New voyage. Name it, say when it starts and how long it runs, and choose when watches start: at a set time, or when you press Begin. Then add the crew in the order they will come on watch, choose the rotation, read the watch bill, and publish it on Share. Each step ends with Next.

Either. The device holds the boat’s record: the plan, the handovers, who has been told of a change. An iPad left on at the nav station works best; on an iPad in landscape the Now tab uses both halves of the screen. To let the crew use it and nothing else, turn on Guided Access (Settings, Accessibility) and triple-click the side button in Watch Bill.

Two people are on deck at all times. Every two hours the helm goes below, the lookout moves to the helm, and the next person comes on as lookout. Each person stands four hours, two on lookout and two on the helm, so one of the two on deck has always been up for two hours. When watches are first set, the last person in the order stands a short first duty of two hours on the helm.

Fixed teams in fours or threes, the Swedish 6-6-4-4-4, 4-4-4-3-3-3-3, and night watches only. The ⓘ beside Watch system lays every system side by side with the hours each would give your crew.

Once a day one watch, at 16:00 by custom, is split in two. That adds a watch to the day, so everyone’s hours move the next day and the small hours are shared around. Turn it off if you want each person to keep the same hours all voyage.

An empty post, one person on two posts, someone on the helm not marked as a helm, someone marked unavailable who still has watches, time off watch shorter than your least, a swap without a reason, and no one trained for the radio on deck. It marks each Warning, Caution or Note. It never calls a plan safe: when it finds nothing, it says “No problems found. The skipper decides.”

Yes. On the Watch bill tab, tap a watch and choose who stands each post. A swap needs a reason, and a warning can be accepted only with one.

On Share, publish the watch bill. Each crew member scans the code on your screen with Watch Bill Crew and chooses their name. Their phone then shows its own code; tap Scan a crew phone’s code and scan it back. No signal, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth is needed.

That you told someone the plan face to face, for anyone without the crew app or who has not scanned. It is recorded apart from a phone that scanned the plan, because that person’s phone may still ring at the old times. Wake anyone briefed only in person yourself until their phone has scanned the new plan.

Publishing a change makes a new version with its own code. Each phone keeps the old version, and rings at the old times, until it scans the new code. Share lists whose phone has which version. No app can reach a phone offshore that has not scanned.

Who is on deck, the time to the next change, and twenty minutes before the change, who to wake. It keeps the screen awake while it is open, so plug the device in. Night view, red on black, is at the top.

On Now, tap Prepare the handover for the next change. Each part (position, course and speed, the next mark or waypoint, traffic and hazards, wind, sea and visibility, sails, the boat and gear, the crew) starts with what was said last time, marked No change. The standing orders show on every handover. The person coming on acknowledges each critical item before taking the watch. Every handover is kept under Handovers and history.

Yes. Choose when I press Begin when you make the voyage, or use Begin on Now. Begin offers the next hour or the next half hour and publishes the times as a new version; everyone scans the new code.

Yes. On Now, Stop the watches, now or at the next half hour. It publishes a new version; show its code on Share. Each phone keeps ringing at the old times until it scans it. To restart, say whether the crew and rotation are the same, choose the time and who comes on first, and publish again. The watches already stood stay as they were.

Tap Print on Now or Share. The printout leads with the Helm, Lookout and Off watch grid, and lists each person’s hours on deck, what each is trained for, the standing orders and the wake-up procedure, in ship’s time and UTC.

On iOS 26, yes, once you allow alarms: the wake call is a full-screen alarm with a Stop button. On earlier iOS the wake call is a notification, which Silent and Focus can hide; the Alarms screen says which this device uses.

On Now, open Alarms on this device, tap Continue and answer iOS, then tap Test: ring in one minute. Try it with the phone on Silent.

iOS lets an app hold a limited number of alarms and notifications at once. Watch Bill sets them in time order and stops at a clean point, and says how far ahead they run. Open the app before then and it sets the next ones.

No. Alarms can be silenced, phones go flat, a phone can be left below. The person on watch wakes the next person in person, by name, and waits for an answer. That is the standard; the phone is the backup.

The clock the boat keeps, which you choose for the voyage: a place name, which follows its daylight saving, or a fixed offset such as UTC-05:00. Every watch is fixed to an exact moment, so a phone’s own time zone never moves a watch. The printed watch bill shows ship’s time and UTC.