KODOThe handover that survives the crew change
Most handovers happen in the last 48 hours: a rushed document, a walk-around, a WhatsApp voice note from the airport. Then the boat spends a season rediscovering what it already knew. This is how to do it properly, from someone who lived the bad version.
Why handovers fail
The leaver is packing, closing out a season and mentally already gone. The handover document is unpaid homework for someone with no stake in what happens after Friday. Even the diligent ones write what's easy to write, not what's hard to know.
The generator's warm-up quirk, which chandler actually delivers on Sunday, how the owner takes coffee, what got someone shouted at in June. None of it lives in a document because none of it ever felt like a document's job.
A handover answers the questions the writer thought of. The new crew member's real questions only surface weeks later, mid-problem, when the person with the answer is on another boat with a new phone number.
What a real handover contains
By department, the things that actually hurt when they're missing. Use this as an audit list against your current handover doc.
- The quirks: everything the manuals don't say, machine by machine
- Open defects, and the full history of past fixes with what actually worked
- Spares on board, spares on order, and which suppliers answer in August
- Service schedule state: what's due, what's overdue, what's been deferred and why
- Berth and marina notes: approaches, contacts, which berths to refuse
- Tender quirks, fuel arrangements, launch routines
- Wash-down, covers and stowage logic that keeps the boat looking right
- Season state: what's ashore, what's aboard, what's broken
- Owner and guest preferences: the coffee, the allergies, the cabin setup, the things never to do
- Provisioning suppliers by port, with the honest notes
- Laundry, stowage and setup logic another stew could follow cold
- Inventory state and what needs replacing before the next trip
- Certificates and surveys with expiry dates, and where the documents live
- Drills state and safety equipment servicing
- The contact list that actually works: agent, chandler, engineer ashore, the owner's office
- Account logins policy: in a password manager, never in the handover doc itself
Two weeks, not two days
Start the document and share it early. A rough draft the incoming person can read before arriving beats a polished one handed over at the gangway. Questions asked in advance are the cheapest questions.
Shadow, don't tour. If you get overlap, spend it doing the actual jobs together: a full machinery round, a provisioning run, a guest cabin setup. The quirks only surface when the machines are running.
Sign off against a list, not a feeling. Walk the audit list above, mark what's handed over, what's documented, and what's honestly unknown. The unknowns matter most: they're the next person's watch list.
Leave a channel open for 30 days. One agreed month of "text me if something's on fire" costs the leaver little and saves the boat weeks. Put it in writing so it's a courtesy, not a haunting.
The template structure
- Read this first: the five things that will bite in week one
- Open items: defects, orders, unfinished works, each with its history
- The routines: daily, weekly, pre-guest, post-guest
- The quirks: everything the manuals and checklists don't say
- People: who to call, for what, and who to avoid
- The unknowns: what the leaver honestly can't answer
The uncomfortable truth: a handover written in the last week was always going to lose. The best handover is the one the boat has been writing all season.
That's the idea KODO is built on. When the crew run their day in one place: tasks, defects, operations, guest notes, the handover stops being a document someone writes and becomes a history the next person inherits. New crew search it, ask it questions, and get answers with sources from the boat's own record.
See a boat that remembers
Thirty minutes on a live demo vessel: watch a new crew member inherit two seasons of history on day one.
Book a 30-minute demo