The Muster App is a complete safety, crew, and visitor management platform built for the professional yacht industry. It replaces the paper muster sheet, the visitor sign-in book, the crew status whiteboard, and the half-dozen disconnected tools most yachts cobble together. Everything lives in one place, runs on the iPad on the bridge, and stays usable when the WiFi drops.
This article gives you the lay of the land — what the app does, who it's for, and how the moving parts fit together. If you're new to The Muster App, start here.
What it does
At its core, The Muster App tracks three things: who's on board, what they're meant to do in an emergency, and what's happened on the vessel. From those three, the rest of the features fall out naturally.
- Crew board — a live view of every crew member on board, their status (on board, ashore, on leave), their department, their rank, and their next muster station.
- Visitor check-in — every visitor who steps on board signs in via the iPad, accepts your terms, has their photo taken, and optionally has their ID scanned and verified.
- Muster drills — when you activate a muster, every iPad on the vessel turns into a live muster list. Crew get marked off as they arrive at their station, and you can see who's missing in real time.
- Abandon ship procedures — port and starboard liferaft assignments, station leaders, individual duties, and station-by-station procedures, all configured once and available to every crew member at the tap of a button.
- Emergency calling — call your DPA, the fire department, or medical contacts directly from the iPad over WiFi. Both sides of the call are recorded into the muster session for the audit trail.
- Safety document storage — upload your SMS, your emergency response plans, your station bills, and any other PDF you need crew to be able to read. Available offline once cached.
Who it's for
The Muster App is built specifically for professional superyachts — both private and charter, both small and large. The typical user is a Captain, Chief Officer, Chief Engineer, ETO, Purser, or anyone else on the management team who's responsible for safety, ISPS compliance, or onboard operations.
Our customers range from 30-metre private yachts with eight crew to 100-metre charter yachts with forty crew. The app scales from one iPad on the bridge to ten iPads spread across the vessel.
If you're not on a yacht — for example, a commercial vessel, a training school, or a non-maritime business — the underlying platform may still work for you, but most of our terminology assumes the maritime context.
How the pieces fit together
There are three components that make up the system. You'll interact with all three at different times.
1. The iPad app
This is the one your crew touch every day. It runs on any iPad (iPad, iPad Air, iPad Pro, iPad mini) with iPadOS 13 or later. You install it from the App Store, authorise the device with a one-time code, and it connects to your vessel's data on our servers.
The iPad app is designed to be the only thing crew need to do their job onboard. It works offline, it syncs in real time when WiFi is available, it talks to a Brother label printer for visitor badges, and it's the device you use to run a muster drill in an actual emergency.
2. The admin panel
This is the web interface at admin.themusterapp.com where you configure everything. You'll log in here to:
- Add and remove crew members
- Build your muster scenarios (fire, abandon ship, man overboard, security, anything you train for)
- Assign crew to muster stations and abandon ship liferafts
- Configure visitor terms, agreements, and emergency contacts
- Upload safety documents
- Review past muster sessions, visitor logs, and crew activity
- Authorise new iPads and manage devices
You can use the admin panel from any computer, tablet, or phone with a modern browser. Most management tasks happen here.
3. The Muster Mate companion app (coming soon)
Muster Mate is a free mobile app for individual crew members. It runs on iOS and Android and lets each crew member see their personal muster duties, their abandon ship station, and any deliveries waiting for them — all on their own phone.
Muster Mate is designed to be the "in your pocket" reference. It doesn't replace the iPad on the bridge, but it means a crew member can check their fire muster station while doing their morning rounds, or get a push notification the moment the captain activates an abandon ship drill.
Muster Mate is still going through App Store and Play Store review at the time of writing. We'll update this article when it's live.
What to read next
If you're just starting out, the next thing to do is set up your iPad. The article on setting up your first iPad walks you through downloading the app, authorising the device, and getting to the crew board for the first time.
If you've already got an iPad set up and you want to add your crew, jump straight to adding your first crew members.