The Vault · Independent
The vault every seafarer keeps,
with or without a vessel.
You do not need a vessel, an office or a crewing agent to use it. This is the part of TouchBase every seafarer has from the day they sign up, and keeps for as long as they go to sea. It is free, and it stays free.
Point the camera. The form fills itself.
A certificate reaches you as a photo on your phone, a PDF buried in an email, or a sheet of paper handed over at the end of a course. Photograph it or pick the file, and TouchBase reads it: the document number, the issue date, the expiry, and what kind of document it is in the first place.
You check it and save it. There is no form to hunt through and nothing to type twice.
After that, all the app shows you is what matters: are your documents current, and what expires next.
A profile that knows what a sous chef carries.
Maritime paperwork is a world of its own: ENG1s, discharge books, STCW tickets, flag state endorsements, GMDSS and every department's own certificates. TouchBase keeps a registry of all of it and then shows you only the set your rank and department actually need. No “upload your engineer's licence” when you are a sous chef.
Around the documents sits the rest of the professional you: identity, next of kin, medical notes, banking for payroll, and a bio written the way you would say it. Fill it in once. Whenever you send your details to a vessel, a crewing agent or a training centre, TouchBase fills them in for you.
One pocket for every paper,
signal or not
Everything is held in secure cloud storage, so a lost phone is an inconvenience rather than a disaster. Sign in on the new one and your career is already there.
And because ships lose signal, your documents are kept on the phone too. Mid-ocean or in a port office with no roaming, it still opens. Anything you add while you are offline syncs when you next get signal, dated when you added it, not when it synced.
“Expires in December”
is not the same as plenty of time.
Every seafarer has had the thought: it runs out in December, I am fine, let me enjoy the rest of my leave. Next thing, you are back on board, and you realise you are away for the entire renewal window.
TouchBase reads your rotation pattern, not just the calendar. It answers the question that actually matters: do you need to renew this leave, or next? On top of that, it knows how long each authority takes to issue a renewal, and builds that into the warning.
You are told once at each stage, in plain words: “your August leave is your only renewal window”. Then it leaves you alone. Your home screen keeps a quiet list of what needs attention; the warnings only come when something changes.
No more bounced emails.
No more someone else's cloud drive.
Sending your papers to whoever asks for them is a job in itself. The attachment is too big and bounces. The crewing agent wants you inside their cloud drive. The port agent needs four pages by tomorrow morning and you are on a night watch. And once it is sent, it is gone. It sits in a mailbox and a chat thread for good, and you have no way to know who opened it, or to take it back.
TouchBase keeps a ready-made list for each of those situations, already built from what each of them actually asks for. Tap the one you need and the right documents are gathered for you.
Then you set the terms. Choose exactly what goes in: personal details, sea service, documents, references, your crew card. Nothing else travels. Set how long the link lasts, a day to a month, and it shuts itself off.
While it is open, you can see it working. TouchBase tells you the moment your pack is opened, and how many times. You know the crewing agent actually opened it. You also know when nobody has, which tells you something too.
And when the job falls through, or it went to the wrong address, or they simply have what they needed: one tap revokes the link. The page stops working at once, for everyone who has it, saved or forwarded on. No more asking anyone to delete an email.
Nobody at the other end has to install anything or make an account. They open a link and see what you sent them, and nothing else.
The captain's letter,
finally somewhere it cannot be lost.
The official reference is what your next job hangs on. And it is the easiest thing in a career to lose: a PDF in a mailbox you no longer have the password for, or a captain who has since moved on. In TouchBase it lands in your vault and stays there.
When your contract on a vessel running APRON ends, the letter is written and filed for you. Lost one from years ago? Open your career log, pick the vessel, and request it. It goes to the captain, and when it is written it lands in your vault.
Alongside the letters sit shipmate ratings: an informal grade from the people you sailed with, nothing riding on it, separate from the captain's official letter. TouchBase only marks it verified when the two of you were genuinely on the same ship at the same time. So it means something to the person reading it.
Your sea time,
recorded however suits you.
Add a voyage by hand in a minute. Or photograph a logbook or sea service page and let the scanner do the typing. Or, when your vessel runs APRON Maritime, do neither: your service is recorded as you sail. Recorded that way, it holds up when a crewing agent or a flag state checks it.
However it got there, it adds up the same way: sea days, vessels, miles and countries, with every voyage drawn on a globe you can spin, or on a flat chart if you prefer. The discharge book you have carried for fifteen years finally has a copy that cannot get wet.
TouchBase turns your sea time into a short video: the ships, the miles and the places, over whatever stretch of years you choose, sized for social media. Sea time is something to be proud of. A crewing agent should not be the only one who ever sees it.
Between contracts,
between employers,
for good
Leaving a job never means losing TouchBase. The account, the documents, the career record and the references are yours, not an employer's. Nobody takes them back when the contract ends.
It all sits in encrypted cloud storage, with a copy in TouchBase for the days without signal. When you leave a vessel, its copy of your personal data is deleted from APRON. If you ever delete your account, everything goes with it. Your data is yours, for good.
If your vessel runs APRON Maritime, the same app also becomes the window to your day on board: tasks, notices, trips, rotations, requests and approvals, straight from APRON. When you leave the vessel, it hands everything back to you.