# Messages

Write to the boater behind a vessel you follow, to anyone who follows your boat, and to your fleet mates. Who can reach you, how you appear, and how to stop someone.

You can write to the boater behind a boat you follow, to anyone who follows your boat, and to the boats in your fleets. **You do not need a boat of your own to send a message**, only a connection with the person you are writing to.

New conversations need that connection. An existing direct conversation can continue after a follow or fleet membership ends, unless either participant blocks the other.

## How you appear

- **By your boat's name** when one is linked to your account, and by the full name on your account otherwise.
- **Never by your e-mail address.** Nobody on AIS Fleet sees it.

Starting a conversation searches by boat name, not by a person's name and not by an address, which is the same rule from the other direction.

## Writing

- Open a vessel and choose **Message**, or start from the **Messages** screen.
- **Each message you send e-mails the other person**, unless they have turned **Direct messages** or **Fleet messages** off in their own notification settings, so a conversation usually works when neither of you is looking at the site.
- **You can attach photographs**, a few per message.
- **You can react to a message** with an emoji, one per person, tapped to add and tapped again to take away.
- **Mark all read** clears the unread count on the inbox.
- There is a limit on how long a message can be and how many you can send in a day, generous enough that ordinary conversation never meets it.

## What happens to messages

> [!IMPORTANT]
> **Messages are kept for 30 days and then removed for everyone, photographs included, read or not.** If something matters, keep it somewhere else. This is not a setting and there is no archive.

**Clear conversation**, in the menu at the top of a thread, hides that conversation for you and deletes nothing for the other person. It comes back if they write again.

## When a boat cannot be written to {#when-a-boat-cannot-be-written-to}

Most of the traffic on the chart has nobody behind it. That is the ordinary case rather than a fault, and AIS Fleet says which of two reasons it is.

- **Nobody has claimed her.** Most vessels are boats we know only from their AIS signal, and there is no reachable account to show you. A Saillogger owner who keeps their boat private is deliberately presented the same way, because a private boat is somebody who has said no. If you know her owner, **Tell her owner** hands you a short note to send them however you already talk: a text, an e-mail, anything. Its link carries the boat's MMSI straight into the claim wizard, and claiming a boat is free. You can also just follow her; messages become available when somebody claims her or her owner later chooses to be reachable.
- **She is claimed, but you have no connection with her yet.** Following her opens messages in both directions straight away, and she is told she has a new follower.

Both answers, and the steps under them, are on the website and in the app.

## Fleet chat

Every fleet has a chat of its own, for its current members only, even where the fleet's map is public.

- **Fleet chat needs a boat linked to your account**, because fleet membership follows the boat. One-to-one messages do not.
- **Only fleets your plan keeps live carry a chat**, and the same is true of reaching those boats one to one: a membership beyond your plan, or a fleet its organizer's plan has paused, confers nothing in either direction. [Plans and billing](https://aisfleet.com/docs/plans-and-billing.md)
- Leaving a fleet takes you out of its chat. [Fleets](https://aisfleet.com/docs/fleets.md)

## Stopping someone

Open your conversation with them and use **Block boat** from the menu in its header.

- Blocking works **both ways** and hides the conversation for both of you.
- It is **not announced** to the other side.
- Your blocks are listed under **Blocked boats** on the Messages screen, where you can undo them.
- Blocking does not change who follows whom, and fleet chats you share are unaffected.

> [!IMPORTANT]
> If contact is unwanted or raises a privacy or safety concern, you can block the person and write to [info@saillogger.com](mailto:info@saillogger.com). Include the account or boat involved so we can review it. [Your account and privacy](https://aisfleet.com/docs/your-account-and-privacy.md#if-someone-is-watching-you)

## Where a message lands for a Saillogger boater

Some of these conversations have a Saillogger boater on the other end. When their sharing makes them reachable, your message arrives in their Saillogger messages, under your boat's name or your published full name.

A private owner is not exposed to you, but can still choose to start a conversation from their side after learning of the follow; once started, both sides can continue it.

> [!NEXT]
> Signing in, what other members can see of you, being watched, and closing the account: [Your account and privacy](https://aisfleet.com/docs/your-account-and-privacy.md).