Abandon ship is handled separately from your other emergencies. Instead of muster stations, crew gather at lifeboats and liferafts — physical objects with a capacity, a side of the vessel, and a crew member in command. Because the structure is so different from a fire or flooding scenario, it gets its own tab in the admin panel with a port/starboard grid, leader role labels, and per-crew duties and equipment.
This article covers configuring that tab end to end. Once it's set up, the iPad's abandon ship view mirrors it exactly, and the hard copy PDF includes a dedicated abandon ship section.
Where it lives
In the admin panel, expand Muster List in the left sidebar and click Abandon Ship Stations. You'll see a grid of cards — one per station — or an empty state prompting you to add your first.
Adding a station
Click + Add Station at the top of the page. A modal opens asking for:
- Name — short and recognisable: "Life Raft 1", "Lifeboat Port", "Rescue Boat Starboard". This is what crew see on the iPad and on the printed muster list.
- Type — Liferaft, Lifeboat, or Rescue Boat. Drives the icon used in the interface and helps with inspection categorisation.
- Station number — optional. Useful if you have multiple rafts on each side (e.g. "Life Raft 1", "Life Raft 2").
- Side — Port or Starboard. This is the most important field: on the iPad and the PDF, port stations are rendered in red and starboard in green, matching maritime convention. It also drives the grid layout on the iPad so crew can see which side to proceed to.
- Capacity — how many people the station holds. Shown on the card as "X assigned / Y capacity" so you can see at a glance whether you're over or under.
Save and the new station appears as a card on the Abandon Ship Stations grid.
Station procedures
Each station card has an optional Station Procedures field for free-text instructions that appear at the top of the crew list on the iPad. Typical content:
- "Pull safety cord before lowering"
- "Confirm all crew donned immersion suit and life jacket"
- "Carry Bridge Grab Bag — contains EPIRB and handheld VHF"
- "Last person aboard unties painter"
These are station-wide instructions that apply regardless of which crew member is assigned — think of them as the standing orders for that station.
Assigning crew with Manage Crew
Each station card has a Manage Crew button that opens a modal listing every active crew member on the roster. For each person you can:
- Tick the checkbox to assign them to this station
- Enter a duty — a specific role at the station, e.g. "Launch boat", "Take headcount", "Carry EPIRB". Shown under the crew member's name on the iPad.
- Enter equipment — what they're responsible for bringing. Comma-separated values render as individual tags on the iPad: "Bridge Grab Bag, VHF Handheld" → two blue tags.
- Set a leader role — pick from the dropdown: — No role — (regular crew), Leader, In Command, 2IC, or Custom… to type your own (e.g. "Liferaft Commander", "Coxswain"). Leader roles show up as a coloured pill at the top-right of the crew card on the iPad.
Crew members can only be at one abandon ship station at a time — if you assign someone to Life Raft 2 who was previously on Life Raft 1, they're automatically removed from the old station. The modal also shows "Assigned to Life Raft 1" next to their name if they're currently on another station, so you know before you re-assign.
Click Save Assignments when you're done. Changes propagate to every iPad on the vessel within seconds.
Order on the iPad
The iPad renders crew within each station in rank order — so your Captain appears at the top, the Chief Officer next, then down through the ranks to deckhands. The order follows the drag-and-drop sequence you set under Muster List > Settings > Rank Order & Muster Ranks, not the order crew were added to the station.
If a senior crew member is on leave and their rank is otherwise covered by an active crew member, they're deduplicated on the iPad — their rank is shown but their name and photo are hidden (a dimmed row with just a role label). This matches the deduplication rule on the hard copy muster list, so what you see on paper and what you see on the iPad stay consistent.
Liferaft notes (printed PDF only)
There's a separate global field under Muster List > Settings > Liferaft Station Notes for a single line that prints across all liferafts on the hard copy PDF — typical content: "IMMERSION SUIT & LIFE JACKET DONNED AT MUSTER". This is standing text that applies to every raft, so you set it once globally rather than per-station.
On the iPad
Crew see the abandon ship view under Safety > Abandon Ship Stations on the iPad. The layout is a two-pane grid: port on the left (red cards), starboard on the right (green cards). Each card shows the station name, type badge, side badge, capacity count, station procedures, and the assigned crew list in rank order with leader pills, duties and equipment tags.
During a live abandon ship scenario, crew know exactly where to go, who's in command, what they're carrying, and what their specific role is — all without needing to reach for a printed muster list.
Common pitfalls
- Over-capacity stations — if you assign 30 crew to a 25-person liferaft, the card shows "30/25" in red. The system won't block you (the captain might deliberately overload during a real emergency), but it flags the mismatch so you notice.
- Mixing sides — don't assign the same crew member to both a port and starboard station across drills. Pick one side per person so they always know which way to proceed.
- No leader on a station — every station should have one person with a leader role (Leader, In Command, 2IC, or custom). Without one, there's ambiguity about who's making decisions at that raft. The admin panel doesn't enforce this but inspectors will flag it.
- Leader labels drift between stations — be consistent. If you use "In Command" on one station, use it on all. A mix of "Leader", "In Command" and "Raft Leader" across different stations looks sloppy on the printed muster list.
What's next
Once abandon ship is set up, the next step is to make sure the rest of your emergencies (Fire, Flooding, MOB, etc.) are configured under Emergencies, then generate the hard copy PDF under Hard Copy and post it around the vessel. See Building emergency scenarios for the other emergency types, and Generating the hard copy PDF when you're ready to print.