How it works
Crew finder for projects, not passages. Someone posts the product they want to launch and the repairs that still need a trade. People claim the work. Then the articles get signed and the boat starts earning.
The course
A captain — or anyone with a hull, a listing, or a product they want to run — puts it on the board. Charters, salvage, cleanup, liveaboard. The product is what people join.
Project, not a weekend tripEngine out. Chainplate cracked. Wiring a mess. Each job is listed by trade so a welder can see the weld, not just “looking for crew.”
The work list is the listingCrew don't swipe onto a boat. They take a job, or raise a hand for a berth. The captain shortlists. That's how a project crew actually forms.
Matched on the jobOnce the hull is fit and the crew is aboard, the product earns — charters, catch, cleanup, whatever was posted. Value goes back to the people who did the work.
The split has to be provableStep by step
The short version above; here's the version with the edges left in — what's required at each leg, and what can go wrong.
A captain — someone who already knows what the boat is for, because they've done the work before — finds the hull, prices it, and opens a project. They write down what the boat needs to become: a dive boat, a research platform, a charter operation. That definition sets every berth that follows.
This is deliberately not an open casting call. "We can't just have random people — somebody has to actually know what the boat does." If a captain doesn't have a real answer for what the boat is for, the project doesn't go anywhere, and it shouldn't.
The captain sets berths by trade instead of posting an open call. Plundr pre-sorts candidates against those berths, and the captain works the shortlist down through actual conversations — the same way any working boat has always found a crew, just with less legwork.
What can go wrong here is obvious: a berth nobody applies for, or a candidate who looks right on paper and isn't once you talk to them. That's exactly why the platform is starting with one pilot boat and three or four people — to find that failure before anyone builds a fleet on top of an untested process.
Once the crew is assembled digitally, that's where the money and the ownership structure land. There's a buy-in — deliberately not free, so the people who show up have something in it. What the buy-in actually buys is set per boat: some captains put real equity in the hull on the table, others offer a timeshare-style right to live and work aboard with no decision rights attached.
Plundr doesn't set that split — captains and crews negotiate their own terms — but it holds the paperwork to the same standard every time: the entity gets formed, the stake gets defined, the articles get signed, and the record gets kept.
A boat that just sits at anchor is a liability with a paint job. Every crew develops a specialty out of what they actually brought aboard — spearfishing, an ocean cleanup contract, a transformative adventure program, land-based trips, straight charter work. The specialty is what turns the boat into an earning asset instead of a hole in the water you pour money into.
This is also where "an exit, not a holiday" matters. Crew-finding apps get you from one port to the next. Plundr is built for people staying on for seasons, sharing in what the boat brings in, and building something they can eventually sell a stake in — or sell out of.
Per-boat agreement
Every boat negotiates its own terms. The articles are where those terms get written down and made real, before anyone needs to lean on them.
The buy-in
What it costs to come aboard, set by the captain per boat — enough that people take it seriously, not so much that it screens out the people who'd actually make a good crew.
The stake
Real equity in the hull, or a timeshare-style right to live and work aboard with no ownership attached. The articles say plainly which one a crew member is buying.
Decision rights
Equity holders usually get a vote; berth-right holders usually don't. How votes are weighted — per head, per share, or with a captain's override — is set out before anyone signs.
Hours owed
What a crew member is expected to put in — maintenance, crossings, the boat's earning work — and what happens if they don't show up for it.
Exit and payout
How someone leaves, how their stake gets valued, and how fast they get paid out. Written down before anyone needs it, not negotiated in the moment someone wants off.
Insurance and registration
Who holds the policy, who's named on the registration, and who's responsible for keeping both current. Plundr keeps the record; it doesn't hold the risk.
If the boat is sold
What triggers a sale, who has to agree to it, and how the proceeds split between captain and crew by stake.
Dispute and removal
What happens when someone stops pulling their weight, or two people can't share a hull any more. The grounds, who decides, and what the person leaving is still owed.
The captain runs the project. The crew owns the outcome.
Governance
Plundr doesn't write the constitution for you. It supplies the template — a captain's vote, a quartermaster's veto, whatever shape a crew wants — and gets it into the articles correctly. The verdict on how a boat governs itself belongs to the people who sail it, not to the platform.
Pirate crews elected their captain. They elected a quartermaster too, to stand between captain and crew when the two didn't agree. It was, before it was anything else romantic, one of the first working democracies afloat.
Some version belongs in every boat's articles
The boundary
Plundr is never on the title. The LLC or trust that owns the boat belongs to the captain, or to the crew's own entity — Plundr forms the paperwork, holds the record, and gets out of the way. Upload your documents, requirements met. If the platform disappeared tomorrow, the boat and its owners wouldn't.