About

Built by someone who has sat on the wrong side of an audit

Helmsman exists because of one very long day in a small home office with five bags of paperwork.

I'm John Wilmans. I've worked as a skipper on small commercial vessels, and I've been the person responsible for producing the records when an auditor asks for them.

The first time I was audited, it was a domestic safety management audit for a small charter company. The owners were badly disorganised and I didn't really know what was going on. The auditor asked for the fleet's induction logs. I dug through bags of paper until I found them. Then he read the masters' logs and started asking why a skipper had worked a boat he had no induction for. That cross-checking went on all day.

Nothing about that day was unsafe. It was just unprovable. The records existed, but they didn't agree with each other, and no one could show that what should have happened actually had.

Helmsman is the system I wanted that day: one place where incidents, certificates, inductions, rest hours and defects are recorded against the vessel and the person they belong to, so the joins are already made when someone comes looking for them.

Why the guides

Most compliance guidance is either the regulation itself, which is hard going, or a consultancy blog post that says nothing concrete. Theguides here are an attempt at the middle: what the rule requires, what it looks like in practice on a small operation, and where people get caught out.

They're written from experience rather than theory, and reviewed before publication. If you find an error, I'd rather hear it than leave it up.

Get in touch

Email hello@helmsmanapp.co.uk — about the product, about a guide, or to tell me I've got something wrong.

If you run a small operation and want to shape what Helmsman does,join the waitlist and say what you need. That's the most useful thing anyone can send me right now.