Many owners don’t live aboard: a job ashore, travel, time away from Noumea. The boat, meanwhile, keeps ageing, keeps taking the rain and keeps receiving contractors. Staying in control from a distance is first of all a matter of organisation and reliable information.
The problem: knowing what is really going on
A boat left in a marina or on a mooring always raises the same questions. Is she properly tied up? Are the batteries holding? Do the bilge pumps kick in? Did the contractor turn up, finish the job, and how many hours did it take? Without reliable information, owners swing between two costly habits: calling constantly, or knowing nothing until the nasty surprise.
The cost is real: wasted trips, work paid for without proof, invoices that are hard to match to jobs, missed deadlines, and a background worry that takes some of the pleasure out of owning a boat.
Set the roles before you leave
The first step fits on a single page: who does what, and who is allowed to decide what.
- The skipper or caretaker: regular visits, checks on mooring lines, bilges and batteries, airing the boat.
- Contractors: a written work order for every job, with a clear scope and a hold point if something unexpected turns up.
- The owner: decides, approves quotes and pays. They should not be the only one holding the information.
- A local contact: holds the keys, knows the cyclone plan and can step in during an emergency.
Write it down and share it. A role that only exists verbally fades within weeks, especially when several people come and go aboard.
Before every absence
- Leave the boat in a known state: dated photos when you lock up, fluid levels, battery state of charge.
- Switch off whatever doesn’t need to run, and keep powered whatever protects the boat, such as the bilge pumps and charging.
- Leave a simple sheet aboard: where the seacocks and breakers are, and the key phone numbers.
- Confirm in writing the planned visits and the work authorised while you are away, with a spending limit above which you must be asked before anything goes ahead.
Visit reports that actually help
An “all good” text message is worth very little. A useful report runs to a few lines and always follows the same pattern, so one visit can be compared with the next.
- Date and time of the visit.
- Lines, fenders and deck condition.
- Bilges: water or not, pumps tested.
- Power: battery state of charge, chargers and refrigeration.
- Dated photos of the sensitive spots, always taken from the same angle.
- Anything unusual and the proposed action.
Photos taken from the same spot on every visit beat a long write-up: scroll through them and a spreading damp patch or a chafing line jumps out straight away.
Reminders, hours and an audit trail
From a distance, deadlines slip easily: fire extinguisher checks, haul-out, engine service, insurance renewal. Reminders that arrive well ahead of the date stop you discovering a deadline on the day it falls. For contractors, ask for hours as the work goes, job by job, rather than a lump sum at the end of the month.
Knowing who did what, and when, protects everyone: the owner, and the honest contractor who can show their work. It is also a valuable asset on the day you sell the boat.
Keeping an eye on power remotely
On a Victron-equipped boat like myCloud, the Cerbo GX brings together the state of the lithium batteries, solar charging and chargers. With an internet connection aboard, Victron offers its own remote monitoring. It is a good overall health indicator: a battery draining abnormally often points to a bilge pump running too often, shore power cut off or a fridge playing up.
How we organise it aboard myCloud
When a job runs for several weeks, like Patrick’s rebuild of the hull-to-deck joint, there is no way to be aboard every day. So we structured the follow-up in the myCloud boat management app. It separates the owner, skipper, yard and guest roles, each seeing and editing only what concerns them. Work orders and contractor hours are logged there, documents are filed by area and by piece of equipment, and the audit log keeps track of every change.
Maintenance reminders arrive 90, 30 and 7 days ahead and on the day itself, and can be subscribed to from the phone’s calendar. The logbook can be filled in by voice using the phone’s dictation, so a visit gets recorded in two sentences before leaving the pontoon. The direct connection to Victron data is ready and being switched on: it is coming soon, and we don’t present it as available yet.
In the logbook. Every visit aboard, ours or anyone else’s, leaves a dated record. After a few months, that history answers most questions without having to call anyone.