Your data, and my promise

In plain English. The way the dossiers are written — including the awkward parts.
Last updated 27 July 2026.

What changed on 27 July 2026: I now keep a log of which pages you open while signed in (address and time only, deleted after 90 days), and I've named the one situation where I would look at your boat list — when something goes wrong and I need to work out who to tell. Both are explained below.

The whole pitch of this thing is that it tells you the truth about what it does and doesn't know. A privacy page that was vague or flattering would contradict the product itself. So here's the honest version.

Your boat list is your business

You're researching boats. Some of them you may be negotiating on. That's your private search, and it's treated that way.

What I look at: which makes, models, and years people are researching — in aggregate, as counts. That tells me which boats deserve a model profile next, and it's how the research gets better for everyone.

What I don't look at: your individual list. Your notes. Your price history. What you're offering on a boat, or what you decided about it. Those are yours.

The one exception, and it's on your terms: if you ask me for help with a specific boat, or you tell me something in the model research is wrong, I'll obviously look at what you sent me. That's you handing me something, not me going looking.

The awkward part I'd rather say out loud

I'm shopping for a boat too. That's not incidental — it's why this exists. It also means that if you're looking at a boat I might want, we're technically in the same market.

So: I don't look at individual users' lists, and I will not act on anything I learn here for my own purchase. If that ever stops being true, this page changes first and you'll hear it from me before you read it here.

I'd rather put that in writing now than have you wonder about it later.

What I record about your visits

Every page you open while you're signed in gets a line in a log: which account, which page, and when. Not what was on the page, not what you typed, not what you were looking at. The address and the time.

I added this in July 2026 for one reason. The product had told a member their boat failed one of the Loop's hard gates when it shouldn't have — and when I went to tell them, I couldn't say whether they'd ever actually seen it. I don't want to be guessing about that again.

I keep it for 90 days, then it's deleted. Long enough to work out what happened. Not long enough to be a history of you.

It isn't used for anything else. I don't read it to see what you're shopping for, and it doesn't feed anything you get marketed.

When I would look at your list

I said above that I don't look at individual lists. There's one exception, and I'd rather name it than have you discover it.

If something goes wrong — a bad verdict, a bug, data lost — I will look at which boats were affected and who owns them. That's the only way to work out who needs telling. If it turns out to be you, you'll hear from me about it.

Your notes stay yours

Anything you write in your own notes and annotations is yours — it's a diary, not research material. It never becomes part of the shared model knowledge, and I don't read it.

When you correct something, you choose the credit

If you know something I got wrong — you owned one, you surveyed one, you've run one — you can say so, and it can improve the research for everyone looking at that model.

Every time you contribute, you choose: credited by your handle, or anonymous. Not once at signup — every single time. You might want your name on what you know about a model's stringers and want to stay anonymous about the engine that let you down. Both are reasonable, and you shouldn't have to pick one forever.

What you contribute becomes part of the shared model knowledge. Your boat, your list, and your notes never do.

Your data if you leave

You can export your data at any time, and you can take it with you when you go. No lock-in. If you stop paying, you can still get your information out — I'm not going to hold your own boat research hostage to a renewal.

During the beta

The beta is free. There's no card, no trial that quietly converts, nothing to cancel.

I'll ask what you think, and at some point I'll ask whether you'd have paid for it — that question is me trying to find out if this is a real business, and "no" is a genuinely useful answer. It won't change your access.

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