Privacy policy

Last updated October 10, 2026

Custom Boat Manual helps owners of used boats keep their boat’s records, and helps people shopping for one. This page explains what we collect and what we do with it, in plain language.

What we collect

• Your account: your email address and username, and whether you’ve agreed to receive marketing email.
• People you share a boat with: the email address you invite them with, and the role you give them. They see that boat’s records (crew and viewers don’t see what she costs), and you can take it away at any time.
• What you add: your boats’ profiles, hours, maintenance, open items, logbook entries, scanned log pages and GPX tracks you import (which show where the boat went), spares, expenses and receipt photos, photos you send to the troubleshooter (with their location data removed), uploaded manuals (we keep their text), electrical descriptions, owner’s-manual answers and chapters, troubleshooter conversations and buyer searches.
• Hull ID checks: the number you type is used to show the result and isn’t saved.
• Service-history links you share: anyone who has a link can see what you chose to include, without an account, until the link expires or you withdraw it. We count how many times each link is opened and when it was last opened, but we don’t record who opened it. The pages aren’t listed in search engines.
• Photos you share for a model page: if you choose to share a photo of your boat, we keep the original privately and publish a copy with boat names, registration and sail numbers and faces blurred and the photo’s location data removed — only after we’ve reviewed it. You can withdraw it from your boat’s page at any time, and we then delete our copies.
• If you subscribe: Stripe takes the payment, and your card details go to Stripe, not to us. We keep your Stripe customer and subscription numbers, your plan, whether it’s paid up and when it renews or ends. Stripe keeps its own records of your payments, as its privacy policy describes.
• Technical data: a sign-in cookie that keeps you signed in, and basic server logs (such as IP addresses) used for security and to stop abuse.

How we use it

• To run the app for you: your checklists, schedules, reports, manuals and answers.
• To send sign-in codes. These are always sent when you ask for one.
• Marketing only if you opt in: occasional tips, product news and offers from Custom Boat Manual, which may include sponsored offers from marine businesses, chosen using what you’ve told us about your boat or your search. If you’ve opted in and saved a Vessel Guide search, that includes up to three emails over the following six months about starting your boat’s manual, which stop once you add a boat. Every marketing email has an unsubscribe link, and you can change your choice on your account page.
• We don’t sell or hand your contact details or boat records to other companies. Sponsors never receive your email address; if you’re interested in an offer, you contact them.

Services we use

• Railway hosts the app and its database.
• Resend sends our email.
• Stripe takes subscription payments and runs the page where you cancel or change a subscription.
• Anthropic (Claude) powers the troubleshooter, owner’s-manual chapters, reading scanned manuals and logbook pages, finding service intervals and part numbers in your manuals, reading receipts you upload, looking at photos you send it (including engine nameplates), suggesting what to blur in photos you share, and document drafting. What you send to those features, and relevant parts of your boat’s records, are sent to Anthropic to produce the answer.

Your choices

• Download your data any time from your account page.
• Delete your account from your account page. Any subscription ends straight away, and everything in the account is permanently deleted, including scanned log pages, receipt photos, troubleshooter photos and any photos you shared.
• Stop marketing email with the unsubscribe link or on your account page.

Keeping it safe

Sign-in codes are stored only in scrambled (hashed) form and expire after 10 minutes. The connection to the app is encrypted. No system is perfectly secure, so please don’t upload anything you couldn’t afford to have exposed.

Children

Custom Boat Manual is meant for adults and isn’t directed at children under 13.

Questions

Email hello@customboatmanual.com.

We’ll post changes to this policy here and update the date above.