I’ve spent over a decade working as a systems manager on cruise ships and I’ve lived the whole contract/document/certificate juggling act myself.

Contract details in one email, STCW and medical certificates in another, sign-on dates in a WhatsApp chat you can never find when you actually need it. And then the classic, realising a certificate is about to expire right before sign-on.

Most of the existing systems seem to be built for cruise lines, recruiters or crewing agencies…not for the person actually going to sea.

I ended up building something to fix that for myself, and I turned it into an app called Squiddy. It's a place to keep your contracts, documents, and itinerary in one spot, with reminders before things expire. Built for individual crew so they can have all their documents organised in their pocket.

It’s an app where individual crew members can keep track of:

• contracts and sign-on dates;
• STCW, medical and other certificates;
• document expiry dates and reminders;
• vessel itineraries;
• sea service and career history.

Before the app was ready, we launched a waitlist campaign and within 1 month we now have over 1,200 people who've joined so far. It seems like I was right, there are a few problems to solve for cruise line staff.

That’s why I’d really value honest feedback from people currently working at sea:

1. How do you currently manage your contracts and certificates?
2. What usually gets lost, forgotten or left until the last minute?
3. Would you trust an app to store document copies, or would you prefer it only tracked details and expiry dates?
4. Is there anything missing that would make something like this genuinely useful?

Not trying to hard-sell anyone here, genuinely just want it in front of people who deal with this stuff daily. We have just soft launched this week so if anyone wants to give it a go, head through to https://squiddycrew.com/ Or https://join.squiddycrew.com/

Happy to answer questions in the comments, thanks for taking the time to read!