An emergency is the foundation of every muster drill in The Muster App. Each emergency — Fire, Flooding, Man Overboard, Collision, Security, Medical and so on — has its own alarm signal, colour, and a list of crew with their assigned muster station and duties. Abandon Ship is handled separately as a dedicated tab, because it's organised around liferafts and lifeboats rather than muster stations.
This article walks you through the admin panel: adding emergencies, assigning crew with duties, and where abandon ship fits in. Once it's configured, every iPad on the vessel picks up the changes automatically and uses them as the structure for live drills.
Where it lives
Emergency configuration lives in the admin panel. Log in at admin.themusterapp.com, expand Muster List in the left sidebar, then click Emergencies. Global settings like alarms, muster stations and rank order sit under the Settings tab in the same group, and abandon ship lives under its own Abandon Ship Stations tab.
What every yacht needs
Most professional yachts have somewhere between five and ten configured emergencies. The standard set covers:
- Fire on Board — usually one scenario, with different duties by crew. Some yachts split by location (engine room, galley, deck) if response differs significantly.
- Flooding — bilge alarm response, watertight door drills, pumping operations
- Man Overboard — lookout assignment, recovery boat launch, search pattern
- Collision / Grounding — damage assessment, watertight integrity, hull inspection
- Security Incident — ISPS Level 2/3 response, restricted area lockdown, crew accounting
- Pollution / Oil Spill — containment, SOPEP equipment deployment, reporting
- Medical Emergency — first aid response, MedAire/CIRM contact, helicopter evacuation
Abandon Ship isn't in this list because it's configured separately — see the section below. You can add any number of additional emergencies your vessel trains for: heavy weather, helicopter ops, piracy response, charter guest evacuation, etc.
Before you add emergencies: set up the basics once
The first time you configure muster, open the Settings tab and set up three things that every emergency will use:
- Alarm Signals — give each alarm a name (e.g. "Continuous Ringing"), a short signal description, and build a visual cadence using the Short, Long, and Continuous buttons. The cadence shows up on the iPad and the hard copy PDF so crew can recognise the sound.
- Muster Stations — the physical locations crew gather at: "Bridge", "Main Deck Aft", "ECR", "Galley". These are defined once here, then assigned to crew per-emergency. Each station has a name and a colour.
- Rank Order & Muster Ranks — the order crew appear in, grouped by department. Drag to reorder, and set a muster rank per person (e.g. "Deckhand A", "Deckhand B") if your vessel uses rotation positions.
Once these are in place, adding emergencies is much faster because you're just picking from the lists you've already built.
Creating an emergency
On the Emergencies tab you'll see an Emergencies sidebar on the left listing existing ones. Click + New Emergency at the bottom of that sidebar to add one. You'll need:
- Name — what crew see on the iPad. Keep it short and recognisable: "Fire", "Collision / Grounding", "Man Over Board".
- Alarm — pick from the alarms you set up under Settings.
- Colour — picks the dot next to the emergency name and helps crew distinguish between types at a glance.
Once saved, the emergency appears in the sidebar and its crew assignment table opens on the right.
Assigning crew, stations and duties
Each emergency has a table of every active crew member, grouped by department. For each person you set:
- Muster Station — a dropdown of the stations you defined in Settings. Pick where that person reports to during this emergency. Leave it as "None" and they're unassigned (greyed out on the iPad).
- Duties — one or more free-text lines of specific tasks. Multiple duties render as a numbered list on the iPad. Examples: "Operate fire pump", "Confirm engine room ventilation closed", "Account for guests in cabins 1-4".
The same crew member can have different stations and duties across different emergencies — that's normal, because your engineer might be in the engine room for a fire but on the upper deck for an abandon ship situation.
Click Save in the header of the emergency when you're done. Changes propagate to every iPad on the vessel within seconds — there's no separate "publish" step.
Abandon Ship is its own tab
Abandon Ship isn't an emergency you add to the Emergencies list — it has a dedicated Abandon Ship Stations tab because it's structured around liferafts and lifeboats, not muster stations. Head there from the sidebar to configure:
- Station name and type — "Life Raft 1", "Lifeboat Port", etc. Type is Liferaft, Lifeboat, or Rescue Boat.
- Side — Port (red) or Starboard (green). Drives the colour coding on the iPad and in the crew boarding view.
- Capacity — number of people the station can hold. Shown on the station card for reference.
- Station procedures — free-text notes shown at the top of the station's crew list on the iPad. Use this for "Pull safety cord", "Check all crew donned lifejacket", etc.
- Assigned crew — click Manage Crew on a station card to tick who's assigned, what their duty is ("In Command", "Rations"), what equipment they're responsible for ("Bridge Grab Bag", "EPIRB"), and whether they lead the station. Leader roles can be chosen from presets (Leader, In Command, 2IC) or a custom label.
On the iPad the abandon ship view appears as a port/starboard grid under Safety > Abandon Ship Stations. Crew at each station are shown ordered by rank — senior crew at the top.
General and liferaft notes
Two free-text fields in the Settings tab affect how the muster list displays everywhere:
- General Notes & Procedures — shown on the iPad's muster list view and on the hard copy PDF. Use for standing instructions: "Report status to the captain by VHF", "Account for all guests before proceeding".
- Liferaft Station Notes — a single line printed on the hard copy PDF's abandon ship section. Typical content: "IMMERSION SUIT & LIFE JACKET DONNED AT MUSTER".
Crew on leave
When a crew member is marked as on leave on the Crew Board, they're dimmed on the iPad and hidden from the printed PDF if an active crew member of the same muster rank is covering their position (the standard rotation pattern). Their station and duty assignments stay saved — when they come back from leave, they reappear with everything intact. You never have to re-enter anything.
This means rotations and leave cycles don't generate any muster admin work. You mark crew on/off leave on the Crew Board as part of your normal daily routine, and every downstream view — the iPads, the next Hard Copy PDF you download — picks up the change automatically.
Reordering emergencies
The emergencies sidebar shows scenarios in the order you've created them. Click into each one to edit its name, alarm, or colour. To change the display order on the iPad, re-order the emergencies list (drag handles coming in a future release — for now, delete and re-add if order matters).
Common pitfalls
- Forgetting to set up stations first — if no muster stations are defined in Settings, crew can't be assigned anywhere and the whole emergency is unassigned. Set up stations before you start building emergencies.
- Duties that are too vague — "Help with fire" isn't a duty. "Operate dry powder extinguisher in engine room, report status to bridge by handheld VHF" is.
- Piling duties on one person — a crew member can only be in one place at a time. If you've assigned the same deckhand to operate the fire pump, collect life jackets, and account for guests in cabins 1–4, they'll do the first one and the others won't happen. Distribute duties so each person has a realistic list they can actually complete.
- Forgetting to update after crew rotations — when crew leave and new crew join, assignments stay linked to the old people. Re-check each emergency after a rotation.
- Not testing on the iPad — after building an emergency, open the iPad's muster list to see it laid out. If something looks wrong, fix it in admin and the iPad updates within seconds.
Once you're done
After your emergencies are built, generate the printed hard copy muster list (SOLAS requires one posted on the vessel) under Muster List > Hard Copy, and try a drill against the live config. Both have their own articles below.