The iPad is the day-to-day tool for muster operations, but SOLAS Chapter III, Regulation 8 still requires every passenger ship and most cargo vessels to display a printed muster list in conspicuous places throughout the vessel. The Muster App generates that printed muster list directly from your live configuration as a single PDF — no more spreadsheets, no more manually retyping crew names every time someone joins or leaves.
This article covers generating the PDF, customising the header, choosing compact mode, and the recommended workflow for keeping the printed copies in sync with the live data.
Why a printed muster list still matters
Even with iPads on every bulkhead, the regulator wants a piece of paper. There are good reasons:
- It works when everything else fails — battery dead, network down, screen smashed, fire in the bridge. A laminated A3 muster list on the engine room bulkhead doesn't care.
- It's familiar to inspectors — port state control and flag state surveyors know what a printed muster list looks like. A printed copy is the universally accepted format.
- Crew can read it without training — new crew, day workers, contractors, charter guests. They might not know how to use the iPad in the first ten minutes on board, but they can read a poster.
- It's a SOLAS requirement — not optional. The exact wording requires the muster list to be displayed in "conspicuous places" — typically the bridge, the crew mess, and major egress points.
The Muster App's approach is to make the printed PDF a direct rendering of your live configuration so the two stay in sync without manual effort.
Generating the PDF
From the admin panel, expand Muster List in the sidebar and click Hard Copy. The page shows a live preview of the PDF on the right with the configuration options on the left. Adjust the options, watch the preview update, and when you're happy click Download PDF.
The generated PDF includes, in order:
- Header — yacht name, IMO number, flag, ship's logo and any other vessel particulars you've configured
- Crew roster by emergency — every active crew member grouped under each emergency (Fire, Flooding, MOB, etc.) with their muster station, duties and muster rank. Crew on leave are deduplicated automatically: they show their rank but the name is hidden if an active crew member of the same rank is present.
- Alarm cadence — a visual pattern showing the short/long/continuous beats for each emergency's alarm signal
- General notes — standing instructions you've entered under Settings > General Notes & Procedures
- Abandon Ship section — a dedicated layout with port and starboard stations, leader labels, duties and equipment. Uses your Liferaft Station Notes line (e.g. "IMMERSION SUIT & LIFE JACKET DONNED AT MUSTER") at the top.
- Footer — the generation timestamp on the left, The Muster App logo in the centre, and the vessel name on the right
Customising the header
The header at the top of every page can include whichever vessel particulars matter to your flag state. From the Hard Copy page, open Print Settings to configure:
- Yacht name — required, defaults to whatever's in your yacht profile
- IMO number — required for SOLAS-applicable vessels
- Call sign — optional
- Flag — country of registration
- Port of registry — optional
- Gross tonnage — optional
- Length overall — optional
- Document version / revision date — useful for inspections so you can tell at a glance when the muster list was last printed
The header settings are saved against your yacht profile, so you only configure them once. Future PDF generations use the saved settings unless you override them.
Always up to date — no extra workflow
The PDF is generated from the same live data the iPad uses. Once your crew and emergencies are set up, there's no separate "re-do the muster list" step for the rest of the season. Just keep doing what you already do:
- Crew going on rotation or leave? Mark them as on leave on the Crew Board. The next PDF you download skips them automatically (and shows their rotation cover in their place), and every iPad on the vessel dims them out in the same moment.
- Returning from leave? Flip the same toggle back to Active. They reappear in the printed PDF and on the iPads with all their previous station assignments and duties intact — you don't re-configure anything.
- New crew joining? Add them as normal on the Crew Board. Assign their muster stations on the Emergencies tab, their abandon ship station on the Abandon Ship Stations tab, and they flow straight into the next PDF.
- New emergency added? Build it under Emergencies and it shows up on the next download.
Everything is pulled fresh when you click Download PDF — rank changes, duty edits, leader labels, alarm signals, header particulars, liferaft notes, ship's logo. You're never working from a stale snapshot. That's the whole point: set it up once, keep your day-to-day crew admin going as normal, and every hard copy you print is current.
Print settings persist
The Hard Copy page has its own Print Settings panel covering paper size, orientation, font sizes, title text and position, notes layout (one column or two), stripes, station colours, borders, which emergencies to include, logo size and position, and about a dozen other visual choices. Every one of those saves automatically the moment you change it, against your yacht profile.
The next time you open the Hard Copy page — tomorrow, next week, after a browser restart, on a different admin laptop — all your settings are exactly as you left them. You don't re-tune anything. The same goes for the header fields (yacht name, IMO, flag, call sign, etc.): configure once, persisted for good, overridable any time.
This matters because most yachts pick a layout that works for them (usually A3 portrait with two-column notes and full borders) and then stick with it for the life of the vessel. The app remembers that choice so Download PDF produces the same consistent document every time.
Where to post the printed list
SOLAS asks for "conspicuous places". For most yachts that means at minimum:
- The bridge — laminated A3 at the chart table or on the bulkhead
- The crew mess — where everyone sees it during meals and crew briefings
- Major egress points — companionways, watertight doors, accommodation entrances
- The bridge folder — a compact-mode A4 copy in the standing orders folder for reference during inspections
Lamination matters — the muster list lives in damp, salty environments and unlaminated paper rapidly becomes unreadable. Most yachts laminate every printed copy.
Re-printing after crew changes
Anytime there's a meaningful crew change — new crew joining, crew leaving, a rotation, a charter season starting — the printed muster list should be re-generated and re-posted. The recommended cadence:
- Re-print after any new crew joins or leaves the vessel permanently
- Re-print at the start of each charter season
- Re-print after any major scenario change (e.g. you've added a new emergency type)
- Re-print on an annual schedule even if nothing has changed, just to refresh the date and confirm the posted copy is current
Each PDF is automatically dated in the footer so inspectors can tell at a glance when it was generated. If your posted copy is more than six months old and your roster has changed since then, that's a finding waiting to happen.