Short a crew for Sunday? Post the boat.

Who it is for

Racers at Hoover Sailing Club, to start. Club racing runs on Sundays from April to late October and on Wednesday evenings from May through August, and every one of those days is on the board before anyone has posted a thing. The boats Tender knows are the ones that carry crew: Flying Scot, Highlander, Interlake, MC Scow, Thistle and Windmill.

You do not need to own a boat, and you do not need to be a club member. If you learned to sail at Hoover, are over eighteen, and would rather be on a race boat than watching from the dock, you are exactly who this is for.

What it does

A skipper posts a boat against a race day: the class, and the least experience they will take aboard, on a four-step scale that runs from never raced, through can hike and trim and can fly a spinnaker, to can helm. Crew mark the days they are free, rate themselves on the same scale, and tick the hulls they will sail, or say any hull.

Then the matcher looks, in three rungs. Strict first: people who ticked that class and rate at or above the skipper’s minimum. If nobody on that rung is free, or the race is 48 hours away, it widens to amber: any hull, still at or above the minimum. If amber is empty too, or the race is 24 hours away, it widens to red: people rated below the minimum. Whichever comes first, an empty rung or the clock, moves it down. The colour on the board is how far it had to look.

Nobody gets hidden. Widening adds people below; it never drops anyone above, and a red name is still a name the skipper can pick. So if you rate yourself low, you get flagged, not filtered out, and if you rate yourself high, a skipper can still see that and decide.

When a rung opens to you, your phone tells you: a notification if Tender is on your home screen, an email either way. You answer with one tap, the skipper picks one of the answers, and only then do the two of you see each other’s contact details.

A morning-of confirm that catches a no-show, and a message thread for each match, are next on the list and not on the board yet.

• Rung 1 · strict

  Ticked this class, rated at or above the minimum.

• Rung 2 · amber

  Any hull, still rated at or above the minimum. Opens when rung 1 is empty or the race is 48 hours out.

• Rung 3 · red

  Rated below the minimum. Opens when rung 2 is empty or the race is 24 hours out, and this is as wide as it goes.

Questions

Does a low rating hide me from skippers?

No. The rungs are a search order, not a filter. A post that has widened to red shows you in red, below the people who matched outright, and the skipper decides. The one thing that keeps you off a post entirely is not marking the day as free.

What does amber mean on a post?

That the skipper has not found anyone who ticked that class yet, so the board is now showing people who will sail any hull and meet the minimum. A post goes amber either because the strict rung was empty or because the race is inside 48 hours. Red is the same thing one step further: inside 24 hours, or amber was empty too.

Do I have to be a club member?

No. Tender is for anyone who learned to sail at Hoover and wants to race, member or not. What you do need is the invite code, and to be eighteen or over.

Who sees my phone number?

Only the person you are matched with. Once a skipper accepts you for a race, the two of you can see each other’s email and phone, and nobody else can, the club admin included. The phone is optional in the first place. What every other member can see is on Tender’s privacy page.

What does it keep about me?

Tender’s own privacy page says everything it keeps, who can see each part, and how to delete your account.