This article isn't legal advice: your DPA, your flag state, and your management company are the authoritative sources for what your specific vessel needs to do. But there's a baseline of muster drill requirements under SOLAS Chapter III and the ISM Code that applies to almost every commercial vessel, including most professional yachts, and this article walks through what that baseline is and how The Muster App helps you meet each part of it.
On a commercially registered yacht under the REG Yacht Code, all of it applies. On a private yacht it is still what the management company and the insurer expect to see.
If you want a single requirement rather than the whole picture: how often drills must be run, what a fire drill must involve, the 25% crew change rule, or what the muster list must show.
The big three documents
Three regulatory documents drive most muster drill requirements:
- SOLAS (Safety of Life at Sea): particularly Chapter III, Regulations 8, 19 and 30, which cover muster lists, drills, and onboard training
- The ISM Code (International Safety Management Code): which requires every vessel to have a documented Safety Management System with regular drill scheduling, recording and review
- Your flag state's interpretations: REG, MCA, CIM, MI and other flag administrations publish guidance documents that interpret SOLAS and the ISM Code for vessels under their flag. These often add detail or stricter requirements.
For yachts, the REG Yacht Code (Part A for large yachts, Part B for passenger yachts) layers its own drill types and record keeping on top of these.
SOLAS Chapter III, Regulation 8: Muster lists
Regulation 8 requires every vessel to display a muster list in conspicuous places, including the bridge, the engine room and crew accommodations. The muster list must:
- Show the duties assigned to each crew member for different emergencies
- Identify the crew member in charge of each duty
- Be in the language(s) understood by the crew
- Be updated whenever the crew or organisation changes
How The Muster App helps: the Hard Copy Muster List PDF is generated directly from your live configuration and includes every crew member, their assigned station, their duties, and the station leader for each scenario. Updating crew in the admin panel means the next generated PDF reflects the change immediately. Print, laminate, post on the bulkhead: that's the SOLAS-compliant printed muster list.
SOLAS Chapter III, Regulation 19: Drills
Regulation 19 is the big one. It requires:
- An abandon ship drill and a fire drill within 24 hours of leaving port if more than 25% of the crew have not drilled on that vessel in the past month — see the 25% crew change drill rule
- An abandon ship drill at least once a month on any vessel, and weekly on a passenger ship
- A fire drill at the same frequency as abandon ship drills — see what a SOLAS fire drill must involve
- Each crew member to participate in an abandon ship drill and a fire drill every month
- The drills to be conducted as if there were an actual emergency
- The drills to be recorded in the official log book
How The Muster App helps: every drill you run on the iPad is automatically recorded in the Muster Sessions log with a timestamp, scenario type, drill/real flag, audio recording, event log, and head count outcome. The Sessions page filtered by "drill type = fire" or "drill type = abandon ship" gives you instant visibility into whether you're meeting the monthly cadence; if you're not, you have a paper trail to show you've at least been honest about it.
SOLAS Chapter III, Regulation 30: Drills on passenger ships
Passenger ships, which for a yacht means more than 12 guests, get additional requirements under Regulations 19 and 30:
- A muster of newly embarked guests before departure or immediately after it. The old 24-hour allowance ended in 2015
- An abandon ship drill and a fire drill every week. Not every crew member has to attend every one, but each of them drills every month
- Crew familiarisation training before sailing
How The Muster App helps: guests are on the muster from the moment they are signed aboard, so the departure muster is run from Muster Control like any other and logged with its time and head count.
The ISM Code: documenting it all
The ISM Code (specifically section 8) requires the company to establish procedures to identify, describe and respond to potential emergency situations. Section 12 requires regular internal audits of the Safety Management System. Together these mean:
- You need documented procedures for each emergency type
- You need a training schedule showing when drills are run
- You need records of every drill including who participated and what was learned
- You need to review and improve based on drill outcomes
- Your DPA must have visibility into all of this
How The Muster App helps:
- Documented procedures: every scenario in the admin panel includes station procedures and individual duties. Print them as the muster list PDF and they become your procedure document.
- Training schedule: the Muster Sessions page shows every past drill with date and scenario. Future drill scheduling can be tracked outside the app or added to your SMS calendar.
- Records: every session is timestamped, with who started it, the participants (crew accounted or unaccounted), the audio recording, the event log and the outcome. Export the session as a CSV and that is your ISM evidence document.
- Review and improve: listen to past drill audio, read the event log, look for patterns. This is what closing the loop on the ISM cycle looks like.
- DPA visibility: the DPA can be given admin panel access to see all sessions remotely, or be sent the exported PDFs after each drill. The VoIP DPA call button on Muster Control means the DPA is also looped in for real emergencies in real time.
What a flag survey or port state control asks for
A flag survey or a port state control visit will ask for:
- The current posted muster list (printed and on display)
- Evidence of the last fire drill and the last abandon ship drill
- The official log book entry for each drill
- The drill schedule for the past 12 months
- The names of crew who participated in the most recent drill
- What was learned from the most recent drill
How The Muster App helps: open the admin panel on a laptop in the bridge, navigate to Muster Sessions (a top-level sidebar link), filter to the last year, and every item on that list is on one screen. Click any session and they can see the head count, the participants, the event log, and listen to the audio if they want to. Export any session as a CSV and they have a printable copy.
That is the difference between being compliant and being compliant on paper.
What the app does NOT replace
To be clear about what The Muster App is and isn't:
- It does not replace your written Safety Management System: the SMS document is still the authoritative procedural reference
- It does not replace the official log book: log book entries are still required, but the Muster App's session export can be the source for those entries
- It does not guarantee compliance: the regulator looks at the whole picture, not just the tooling
- It is not classed as a SOLAS-required device: you could lose every iPad and still be compliant if you have the printed muster list and the paper log
What it does is make the compliance work less painful, more thorough, and easier to evidence. The intent is to lift the floor (make it harder to be a sloppy operator), not to replace good seamanship and a competent safety culture.