Every vessel operating under the ISPS Code is expected to keep a record of who comes aboard. On most ships that record is a paper book at the gangway. This article covers what the log needs to record, the habits that keep it honest, where the paper version lets you down, and what keeping it digitally looks like. For where the requirement actually comes from, the three security levels and retention, read the regulations reference: ISPS visitor log requirements. This article is the practical half.
The four things the log must record
For every person aboard who is not crew, the record needs to show:
- Who boarded: their name, and the company or organisation they represent
- When they came and when they left: both timestamps, not just the arrival
- Who they visited: the crew member hosting them, or the purpose of the visit
- Who cleared them: whether ID was checked, whether a search was carried out, and the name of the crew member who did it
The obligation lives in your Ship Security Plan rather than in a numbered paragraph of the Code. An inspector treats the log as the evidence that the plan is being practised.
The habits that keep it honest
A log is only as good as the moment each entry is made. Four habits matter more than the format:
- Record at the point of access, before boarding. An entry written up later from memory is a reconstruction, not a record.
- Capture the departure. The blank check-out column is the most common defect in a gangway book. It also breaks your count of who is aboard right now, which is the number a muster depends on.
- Note the search when it happens. The name of the crew member who carried it out belongs in the entry, written at the gangway, not filled in at the end of the watch.
- One entry per visit. A contractor who boards three times in a day is three entries, each with its own in and out.
Where the paper book fails
Anyone who has stood a gangway watch knows the weaknesses. Handwritten entries go illegible. Departures are left blank. There is no photograph, so the record cannot say what the visitor looked like. There is one copy, and it lives outside at the gangway. And it cannot be searched: answering "show me every visit by that contractor last March" means turning pages. None of these fails an inspection on its own. Each one makes the record weaker as evidence.
Keeping the log digitally
A digital visitor log makes the record a product of the check-in itself. In The Muster App, the visitor works through the iPad at the gangway: their name, their company, the crew member they are here to see, a photo, and the visitor agreement signed on the screen before they board. ID checks and searches follow the security level in force, and a search is cleared by a crew member entering the security PIN, so the record shows it was supervised.
The departure half looks after itself. Sign-out is one press, on the iPad or from the admin panel. Automatic checkout signs out everyone still on the board at a time you set, and an overstay email tells you if someone is aboard past it. A missed sign-out can be corrected afterwards, and the record keeps who changed it, when and why.
The result is a log that can actually answer questions. The live board shows everyone aboard right now. The history holds every past visit with both timestamps, the host, and whether the visitor was searched. It exports as a PDF showing visitor, came in, left, searched by, and both signatures. Signed agreements are kept as evidence and are not deleted when the visitor leaves, and records are kept as long as you decide.
Start with the record you already keep
If you are moving off paper, begin by matching what your Ship Security Plan already requires: the same four facts, captured at the same gangway, by the same watchkeeper. The change is that the entries stop being handwriting in a book and become records you can search, export and hand to an inspector.
For the day-to-day of finding a past visit and producing the export, see searching and exporting the visitor log. For what the Code itself asks, see ISPS visitor log requirements.