Backfill your past sea service in one sitting.

Can I add sea time from before I installed the app?

Yes. There are two actions for it: Log past vessel and Log past voyage. The home screen can also show an “Add your career so far” prompt to get you started, which you can dismiss.

What is the difference between logging a past vessel and a past voyage?

Log past vessel is where you register a ship you served on, with your rank and the dates you joined and left. That creates the contract and its days aboard. Adding the days you spent at sea on board is optional, as a quick lump sum.

Log past voyage appears once you have at least one vessel. You pick that vessel, enter the departure and arrival dates, and the leg's sea days are the span between them. The voyage is filed under the contract whose dates contain it.

How does the app estimate sea days for a past contract?

Days aboard are exact: the full span from joining to leaving. Sea days are different, because days in port don't count, and few people know their exact figure for an old contract. So you choose a rate: 5, 10 or 15 days at sea a month, all month, or a custom number.

The app converts that rate into a total using real calendar months — a 28-day February and a 31-day March each count as they are, and part months are worked out in proportion. The result can never be more than your days aboard. A live line under the choices shows the running result, for example “≈ 90 sea days · 183 aboard” for six months at 15 a month.

Is an estimated figure good enough for my testimonial?

Our advice: treat a rate-based figure as a placeholder, not as evidence. A sea service testimonial records the service you actually did, and your Master signs to it. If you have the real count — from an old testimonial, a discharge book or your own notes — enter it with Custom instead of a rate.

The MCA's own rule for what counts as a day of seagoing service is in our sea time guide.

Where does backfilled time show up?

In the same places as time you log live. Career shows sea days and days aboard as two headline figures, and a contracts timeline lists each contract with its own sea days and days aboard.

How do I add several past contracts at once?

Use Save & add another. The app saves the contract and keeps your rank (and the vessel, if you picked one already in your fleet), so the next entry is mostly dates and a days-at-sea choice. A running tally shows how many you've added and how many sea days that came to. Close the form when you're done.

Can I correct a past entry later?

Partly. A voyage can be opened and its dates, ports and distance changed, or deleted. Saving an edit recounts that voyage's sea days as every day between its dates. On an estimate you made with Log past vessel, that replaces your estimate with your full days aboard. To correct an estimate, delete that entry and log the real voyages with Log past voyage. Deleting a voyage also removes any watches logged on it. The joining and leaving dates of a past contract can't be changed after saving, so check them before you tap Save.

What should I have to hand before I start?

Our advice: your discharge book or old testimonials, for each vessel's name, gross tonnage and joining and leaving dates. Those are the fields a testimonial asks for, so getting them right now saves work when you export.

Does past sea time count towards the 100 free sea days?

Yes. Logbook is free up to 100 sea days in total, whenever those days happened. If saving a past contract or voyage would take your total over 100, the app asks for Bridgedeck Pro before it saves that entry.

Anything already saved stays yours: your existing records are always free to view and export.

Can I backfill on my phone with no signal?

Yes. Like everything else in Logbook, past entries are saved on your phone first and backed up when you're back online.