My life aboard

My life aboard (menu: "My life aboard", under My life) is the home page of five free personal tools for your own pay, papers, time aboard, tax days and next certificate. Each tool is a card with a badge that shows its state at a glance, for example "not set up", "3 to check" or "120 days left". Everything you type here is yours alone: it is never shared with the ship, the Master or the office, and it is never part of the ship file. On the trial and the paid plans it is copied through the SeaReady server to your own other signed-in device only, and only you can read it; on the Free plan it stays on this phone. It is also included when you export a backup from Settings.

Wage & contract wallet — save your contract terms (employer, manning agent, vessel, rank, sign-on date, length in months, currency, basic wage, fixed overtime, leave days per month and allotment) and add a payslip for every month. The app compares each payslip with the contract and lists the differences: basic below the contract, overtime below the fixed amount, allotment not sent or short, an amount received lower than the payslip works out at, and months with no payslip recorded. Leave below 2.5 days a month is flagged against MLC 2006. The "Payslips checked against the contract" card also shows months served, leave days earned and leave pay on slips. A "Sign-off final account checklist" lists what to confirm before you leave: wages to your sign-off day, overtime, leave pay, allotments received at home, every deduction explained, travel home paid by the company, a signed final account, the discharge book entry and photos of every payslip. "Evidence pack (PDF)" builds one PDF with the contract, every payslip, the differences found and the checklist, ready to give to an ITF inspector, your union or SeafarerHelp.

Ready to join — documents — keep every passport, seaman’s book, visa, medical certificate, CoC, flag endorsement, STCW course, vaccination and other document with its issue and expiry dates, an optional number and photos. Enter your next contract (sign-on date, length in months and the countries you expect to call at) and the "Next contract" card tells you what runs out: documents already expired, expiring before you join, expiring during the contract (a passport is red, other documents amber), a passport with less than 6 months left after the contract ends, route countries with no visa saved, and visas that run out before the contract ends. Each document shows "valid", the days left when under 90, or "expired". "Summary PDF" makes a one-page list for your agent; document numbers are left out unless you tick "Include document numbers".

Contract countdown — uses the sign-on date and length from your wallet to show days aboard, days left (or days over), the percentage done and the date the contract ends. It warns 30 days before relief is due and turns red once the contract has ended. It shows the dates you reach 11 and 12 months aboard and warns when you are near or past them, because under MLC 2006 the period on board must be less than 12 months. You can add an agreed extension. It also writes a polite "Sign-off request letter" to the Master from your wallet details, with the port and date you would like and, if ticked, a note about the MLC limit and repatriation at no cost.

Tax day counter — log where you were each day (at sea, in port on board, in your home country, or ashore in another country) and see day totals for each tax year of your country. Ten countries are built in: the United Kingdom (a Seafarers’ Earnings Deduction check that finds qualifying periods of 365 days or more in your log), India (the NRI day count with the 182-day, 120-day and deemed-resident rules), the Philippines, Ireland, Norway and Croatia, plus four marked "not yet verified" (Greece, Poland, Ukraine and Indonesia) where the app shows day totals and the general rule only. Days you have not logged count as days in your home country, the cautious assumption. You can add your Sea Service contracts as sea days in one tap, download the log as a CSV file and ask for another country with "Request my country".

Next certificate planner — compares the sea time in your Sea Service log with the international STCW minimum for the next Certificate of Competency: OOW to Chief Mate (12 months), Chief Mate to Master (36 months, or 24 if at least 12 were as chief mate), EOOW to Second Engineer (12 months) and Second Engineer to Chief Engineer (36 months, at least 12 of them as second engineer). Pick your administration (UK MCA, India DG Shipping, Philippines MARINA, US Coast Guard or Australia AMSA) and your next step; contracts are ticked by rank and you can change any of them. A "CoC revalidation test" checks the 5-year rule: 12 months of sea time in the last 5 years, or 3 months in the last 6 months.

Everyone, on every plan including Free, for every rank. The PDFs count towards the Free plan’s monthly prints. Nobody else can see these tools: not the Master, not other crew, not the office.

1. Open the menu, tap "My life aboard" and choose a tool card.
2. Wage & contract wallet: fill in your name, sign-on date, contract length and the money boxes, then tap "Save contract".
3. Each month tap "Fill from contract", change the figures to match the real payslip, pick the month and tap "Add payslip"; the differences appear under "Payslips checked against the contract".
4. Before you leave, enter the "Actual sign-off date (if signed off)", tick the "Sign-off final account checklist" and, if pay is wrong, tap "Evidence pack (PDF)".
5. Ready to join — documents: tap "Add", choose the "Type", name, dates and country, tap "Save document", then tap "Photo" on the saved document to add a picture of it.
6. Enter your next "Sign-on date", "Length (months)" and the countries on your route (type one and tap "Add"); read the red "fix" and amber "check" lines; tap "Summary PDF" for your agent.
7. Contract countdown: check the three boxes and the bar, add an "Agreed extension (months)" if you have one, fill in the letter boxes and tap "Show letter", "Copy text" or "Print".
8. Tax day counter: choose your "Country of tax residence", add entries with "From", "To (inclusive)" and "Where", or tap "Add my Sea Service contracts as sea days", then pick the tax year in "Day totals".
9. Next certificate planner: choose your "Administration" and "Next step", tick or untick contracts under "Which contracts count?", and read "Qualifying sea time" and the "CoC revalidation test".

• Add your name in the wallet first: the evidence pack, the documents summary and the sign-off letter all take it from there.
• A short tax-day entry inside a longer one wins, so log a whole contract as at sea first, then add port calls and leave on top.
• India: days on board between joining and signing off are not days in India, even in an Indian port — log them as "At sea" or "In port (on board)". UK: a day on board in a UK port is a UK day — log it as "In port (on board)" with country United Kingdom.
• Keep ID numbers out of the documents summary unless it is going to your own manning agent; in the list they are hidden and shown only when you tap the eye.
• The STCW figures are the international minimum: your administration can ask for more and decides what sea time counts, so check with it before you apply.

• Everything here works offline; only "Request my country" in the tax day counter needs internet.
• Not legal, tax or financial advice, and the wallet, countdown and tax counter say so on screen. Talk to your company or manning agent first, then ITF or SeafarerHelp.
• Document photos must be JPEG or PNG under 15 MB; they stay in the phone’s storage (and on the trial or a paid plan in your own private cloud copy for your other device).
• On the Free plan the evidence pack, the documents summary and the countdown print each use one of the month’s free prints and carry the free watermark; the trial and the paid plans print without limits.
• Four tax countries are marked "not yet verified": the app shows the day totals but tells you to check with your tax authority.
• The next certificate planner counts days from sign-on to sign-off (1 month = 30.4 days), overlapping contracts once; it has not verified any administration’s own sea-time figures.
• SeaReady never checks or sends your records to anyone.