Boatlink

A boat is a loud place. The engine is running, the wind takes your voice away, and the person you need is at the other end of the deck with a line in both hands. Boatlink puts the crew on one line. Every phone and tablet aboard talks to every other one, hands-free, so "ready on the bow" is heard at the helm in a normal voice. It needs no internet and no phone signal. On a boat with wifi, the router carries it. With no router, one person turns on Personal Hotspot in iOS Settings and the crew join that. Boatlink cannot switch a hotspot on for you — iOS does not let any app do that — so somebody has to do it by hand. GETTING ABOARD One person hosts. Their screen shows a QR code; everyone else points a camera at it and they are on. If a camera will not do the job — rain, dark, glare, a cracked screen — the host reads out a four-letter code instead, and the crew type that in with the boat's…