Two tools, one idea

Software for people who sail together.

Getting the right people onto the right boat should not take a spreadsheet and twelve text messages. Burgee starts from the boat and works outwards.

Open Burgee Crew For clubs

Made on the Essex coast. Billed in sterling, with your data held in the UK.

Free, for skippers

Burgee Crew

Pick a date, send one link, see who is coming. Your crew reply with a tap and never sign up for anything.

Knows your boat, your berth and your own tide table, so it only offers dates you can actually leave and return on
Says whether it is a day sail or a night aboard, and how many it has room for
One link, pasted wherever you already talk to people
Experience asked once and remembered, so nobody types it twice; next of kin deletes itself a month after you are back
When the date moves, it writes the message and shows you who has not seen the change yet

Open Burgee Crew How it works

Free to use and staying that way. If it saves you a season of texting, you can chip in towards the hosting.

For boat clubs · in development

Burgee Club

Members, subscriptions, events and payments in one place, with crew matching no other club system has.

Joining, renewals and subscriptions that collect themselves
An events calendar members can book and pay for on a phone
A boat register, and crew matching that understands experience
A committee dashboard with figures you can click through to the people behind them
Your members, payments and history exportable on demand, held in the UK

See what it costs

Indicative pricing from £15 a month, banded on the members who actually pay. Being built now – talk to me about being one of the first clubs on it.

Why it is different

Built by someone who runs the boat

Most club software was written for gyms and golf clubs and had boats bolted on afterwards. Burgee started with a skipper trying to fill three berths on a Saturday, which turns out to be the hardest thing a club actually does.

A boat is not a meeting room

Berths, draught, a sill you can only cross on enough water, who is qualified to be aboard. None of that fits a membership database with a calendar stuck on top.

Nobody joins anything to reply

The person you invite taps a link and answers. No download, no password, no account. It is the difference between four replies and none.

Your tide table stays yours

Burgee publishes no tidal data and stores none. You bring your own table, it is read on your own device, and it never reaches our servers. Which means a club never redistributes it either.

The part nobody asks out loud

You are never stuck with us

Burgee is one person and a great deal of care. That is a fair thing for a committee to worry about, particularly a committee that has been left before with a website only one member could touch. The code is not open, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. What I can do is make sure that leaving costs you nothing, and write it down before you need it.

The data is yours, not mine

Everything your club puts in comes out again: members, subscriptions, events, payments and financial history, in ordinary formats any other system can read. The software is mine. The records are yours, and nothing about the way this is built makes them hard to take back.

No notice period, no exit fee

You can leave at the end of any month, with your data, at no cost. There is no minimum term, nothing to serve notice on, and no charge for getting your own records back. A club that stays because leaving is expensive is not a club that is happy.

What happens if I stop

One published page: how much notice you would get, how your data comes out, and how the source can be released to you or to a developer you choose if I ever stop supporting it. Written now rather than promised later, because it is the question you cannot ask politely.

Club pricing

Published, and priced on members who pay

Burgee Club is in development. These are the prices it will launch at, published early so a committee can budget. Nothing is charged until it is running for you.

Banded on paid members at your renewal, not on every contact who ever gave you an email address. Assessed once a year, so recruiting in March does not cost you more in April.

Paid members	Per month	Per year	Notes
Up to 50	£15	£180	Self serve, no setup fee
51 to 150	£30	£360	With help moving your data across
151 to 350	£55	£660	Everything
351 to 750	£90	£1,080	Everything
751 and over	£140	£1,680	Everything

A one off £500 covers moving your members, subscriptions and financial history across, and is waived on the smallest band. Nothing per event, per booking or per email. No charge for members who have lapsed.

What's next

Two problems worth solving

Both came out of looking at how marinas and clubs actually work. Neither is built and neither is promised. They are here because the people who would use them are the people reading this.

Exploring

A boat record you fill in once

Every marina asks for your length, beam, draught and home port, every single time, and you type it again every single time. A record you own and choose to share would end that, and make a visitor booking take seconds.

Exploring

Telling your marina the berth is free

Marinas turn visitors away in August while berths sit empty, because nobody told the office their owner is away for the weekend. If you are already telling Burgee you are going sailing, telling the marina could be one tick, on terms that suit you.