Planning a Boat Trip: Get the Crew Organized

Getting the crew on the same page and planning a boat trip can be challenging!

There is plenty to coordinate including the provisioning list, travel arrangements, crew information, and much more. It doesn't get any easier when you have a full complement, such as 8 people on a catamaran.

Here's the good news: there are plenty of free collaboration tools available to assist you! Don't get suckered into sending emails back and forth. There is a better way!! 

I use Notion for my business, so it made sense to give it a shot with the rest of the crew. There are, however, plenty of alternatives such as ClickUp or Asana. Use what makes sense for you!

I like Notion in this case because it's simple and easy to use. None of the rest of my crew were familiar with it, but they all learned it quickly. Despite being user-friendly, it has some powerful features. 

If you're anything like us, the majority of planning a boat trip will be spent perfecting the food and drink provisioning lists. It is essential you do not run out of beer. This is time well spent!
We always grab the last trips' Google Sheet and update accordingly. Google Sheets is great to use because multiple people can access and edit the same document.
Notion allows you to embed the Google Sheet directly on a page for quick access. 

Everyone in the crew loves to know what the plan is. Sometimes that information, unintentionally gets stuck in the Captain's head.
I used a table database to make sure everyone was able to contribute and collaborate with the sailing itinerary. Create a record for each day and include fields like anchorage and meal planning.
In a similar way, we also use a separate table database to collect the crew's info (passport, flight #s, etc). This is info the captain must submit to the charter company. This can save him or her a lot of time chasing it down from the crew. 

Maintain your boat briefing checklist

The boat briefing is an important activity before departing the marina. You want to make sure you cover everything on your checklist, and do it efficiently so you can get out to the islands!
If you put your checklist in notion, you can divide and conquer some of the checklist items - some of the crew can go through the inventory while the others go through safety and operability. 

We also used Notion to collect up links and files the crew would want to access frequently. This included: