The Muster List board is your crew's reference for every emergency scenario the vessel has planned for. Fire on board, flooding, man overboard, collision, security incident, pollution, medical emergency, abandon ship — each scenario has its own muster stations, its own duties, and its own assigned crew, and the Muster List board is where any crew member can pull all of that up in two taps.
This is the reference view, not the live drill view. When something is actually happening, the captain runs Muster Control (covered in its own article). The Muster List board is the screen crew use during training, before drills, when refreshing their memory on their assigned duties, or when an inspector asks "show me your station bill on the iPad."
Browsing emergency scenarios
The top of the Muster List board shows a row of scenario cards, each one representing an emergency type your admin has configured. A typical setup looks something like:
- Fire on Board
- Flooding
- Man Overboard
- Collision / Grounding
- Security Incident
- Pollution / Oil Spill
- Medical Emergency
- Abandon Ship
Tap a scenario card to open it. The screen now shows every muster station configured for that scenario, the crew assigned to each station, and the duties each crew member is responsible for. Tap a different scenario to switch — the iPad keeps everything cached so flipping between scenarios is instant, even offline.
Reading a muster station
Each muster station card shows you, at a glance:
- Station name — e.g. "Bridge", "Engine Room", "Forward Deck", "Galley"
- Station leader — the crew member in charge of that station for this scenario, with their photo and rank
- Assigned crew — every crew member who musters to this station for this scenario
- Duties — what each crew member is expected to do once they arrive at the station
- Station procedures — any general instructions or checklists that apply to the whole station (e.g. "Confirm bilge pump status, report to bridge")
Each crew member's row shows their photo, name, rank, and the specific duties assigned to them for this scenario at this station. The same crew member might appear at different stations for different scenarios — that's normal, because emergency response requires different people in different places depending on what's happening.
The Abandon Ship view
Abandon Ship gets a dedicated view because it's structured differently from every other emergency. Instead of grouping crew by muster station, abandon ship groups them by liferaft, and the view is colour-coded by side of the vessel — red for port, green for starboard — so the layout reflects the actual physical location of the liferafts on the vessel.
Each liferaft card shows:
- Liferaft identifier — e.g. "Port Forward", "Starboard Aft"
- Capacity and type — e.g. "25-person SOLAS A"
- Side colour bar — red for port, green for starboard, easily readable from across the bridge
- Liferaft leader — the crew member responsible for launching, boarding, and managing that liferaft. The leader's role label is configurable in the admin panel — some yachts call this "Liferaft Commander", others "Raft Leader", others use the official IMO term, and the iPad displays whatever your admin has chosen.
- Crew assigned to this liferaft — with photos, names, ranks, and any specific abandon-ship duties
- Station procedures — pre-launch checks, equipment to bring, head-count protocol
The Abandon Ship view is laid out as a two-column grid where possible — port liferafts on the left, starboard on the right — so a crew member opening the screen during a real abandon-ship scenario can see at a glance which side of the vessel they're heading to. This is a deliberate design decision that came directly from feedback from real captains who said the colour and side information needs to be obvious before any reading happens.
On-leave crew are excluded
Crew who are currently marked as on leave in the admin panel do not appear on the iPad's muster list, even if they're nominally assigned to a station or liferaft. This matches exactly what your hard-copy PDF muster list shows — the printed version only includes crew who are actively on board, because including someone who isn't there in an emergency reference would be dangerous.
When the crew member returns from leave and is toggled back to active in the admin panel, they reappear on every iPad's muster list within a few seconds. Nothing about their station assignments changes — they're just hidden while they're away.
This rule applies consistently across the iPad muster list, the printed PDF, the abandon ship view, and the live Muster Control session. If they're on leave, they're invisible to all of it.
Multi-duty crew
A crew member can have more than one duty at a station. The chief engineer, for example, might be assigned both "Confirm engine room ventilation closed" and "Report status to bridge" — those show as two separate bullet points under the same crew member, not two separate appearances on the station.
Similarly, the same crew member can be assigned to multiple stations across different scenarios. The Muster List board handles this naturally — opening a different scenario shows the same crew member at a different station with different duties.
Reading on the bridge during training
During a drill briefing, the recommended workflow on the iPad is:
- Open the Muster List board
- Tap the scenario you're about to run (e.g. "Fire on Board")
- Hand the iPad to the crew member leading the briefing — they walk through every station and read out the duties
- Each crew member confirms they understand their assigned duty
- If you're running an abandon ship drill, switch to the Abandon Ship scenario before launching the drill so the side and liferaft layout is fresh in everyone's mind
For new crew joining the vessel, the standard onboarding is to walk them through every scenario card on the Muster List board, point out their station and assigned duties for each, and have them physically walk to each station so they know the route from their cabin in the dark.
Where the assignments come from
You can't edit muster assignments from the iPad. All structural editing happens in the admin panel under Muster Configuration at admin.themusterapp.com. From the admin panel you can:
- Create and edit emergency scenarios
- Configure muster stations and station procedures
- Assign crew to stations for each scenario
- Define specific duties for each crew member at each station
- Configure liferafts (port/starboard, capacity, type) for the abandon ship scenario
- Customise the leader role label (e.g. "Liferaft Commander" vs "Raft Leader")
- Generate the hard-copy PDF muster list for posting on the vessel
The iPad pulls the muster configuration from the server in real time and caches it locally so the muster list works offline. When an admin updates a scenario, the change appears on every iPad on the vessel within a few seconds.
The hard copy PDF still matters
SOLAS regulations require a posted, physical copy of the muster list on the vessel — the iPad doesn't replace that, it complements it. The Muster Configuration section of the admin panel can generate a print-ready PDF that matches the on-iPad view exactly, and most yachts post this PDF in the crew mess, the bridge, and at major egress points.
The advantage of the iPad is that it's always up to date the moment an admin changes anything, while the printed PDF is a snapshot in time. Most yachts re-print and re-post the PDF every time there's a significant crew change or after each charter season.
Offline access
Like the rest of the iPad app, the Muster List board works offline. The full muster configuration (scenarios, stations, crew assignments, duties, abandon ship liferafts) is cached locally on each iPad and remains fully readable when there's no internet. This is critical — if a fire breaks out at 0300 in the middle of the Atlantic and the WiFi router is on the same circuit that just tripped, your muster list still works.
The cache updates automatically whenever the iPad has connectivity. There's no manual sync to think about, and no "download" button to forget — it just works.
What to read next
Once your crew know their stations and duties, the next step is actually running drills against this configuration — that's covered in Muster Control, the live session view used for drills and real emergencies. For setting up and editing your muster list itself, see the Muster Configuration section of the admin help (coming soon).