Charter Rode is a Hybrid Blockchain purpose built for mariners to help them accurately log sailing and boating experience so that insurance companies, charter companies, and other agencies will trust and accept their experience.

Charter Rode is a sailing logbook for tracking sailing experience. It is not a general purpose vessel logbook to keep track of maintenance or other related information. It is a standards-based approach to documenting experience that sailors accumulate on-the-water and off-the-water to allow any interested party to independently view, verify, and determine, based upon their own set of rules, if a sailor has the necessary experience and competence for a specific situation.

The major difference between Charter Rode and any digital sailing logbook is that Charter Rode utilizes blockchain technology, cryptographic keys, and hashes to secure all transactions. This allows you to securely share your resume with anyone and for anyone in the world to trust that your resume is authentic and the underlying logbook entires have not been modified since they were created and verified on the Sailing Resume Blockchain.

Charter Rode is a Hybrid Blockchain purpose built for mariners to help them accurtely log their experience so that insurance companies, charter companies, and other agencies will trust and accept their experience. Insurance Rode and Agency Rode really didn’t capture the imagination and purpose of Charter Rode. Charter or Chartering is a recognizable term in the maritime industry, as well as other industries such as the airline industry. If you don’t know what a rode is, in a maritime setting, the definition of a rode is the rope or chain attached to the anchor which is in turn secured to the boat. The most secure rode is made up of chain which ties nicely into blockchain, don’t you think?

No! Sailors, sailing, sailing resumes, all refer to your overall boating experience. Log your powerboat, sailboat, 100m+ super yacht, and super tanker experience all on Charter Rode! Are you a professional mariner working through your licenses and ratings? Use Charter Rode to track every trip on every vessel and use crewmate verification to have your Captain digitally sign your Charter Rode log. You don’t want to log your SUP, jet ski, kayak, or white water rafting experience, but even 18′ ski boat experience can be relevant to earning your US Coast Guard Captain’s License.

Blockchain is a system of recording information in a way that makes it difficult or impossible to change, hack, or cheat the system. Distributed ledger technology (DLT) is another name for blockchain and the underlying components that enable a distributed and immutable (unchangeable) database.

Blockchain systems use cryptographic keys to digitally sign data and to prove that the holder of the cryptographic keys created the data. This allows for a secure and trusted way to share data. In the case of Bitcoin, it is data relating to who owns which Bitcoins on the Bitcoin network. In Charter Rode, it is who owns and who verified sailing experience logged on your Trusted Sailing Resume.

No. Public blockchains allow anyone to join the network; anyone to verify transactions; and anyone to read all data relating to the network/chain. Charter Rode is a hybrid blockchain because not all the data relating to the Charter Rode network is made public. Only verified transactions, without identity information, are published to the Sailing Resume blockchain that anyone in the world can see without any restrictions. For example, when you create your account, you must upload government issued photo ID pictures to ensure you are who you say you are. These photos are never shared on the Sailing Resume Blockchain and are only used internal to Charter Rode to validate your identity.

In addition, not everyone may join Charter Rode. If you refuse to allow Charter Rode to verify your identity, or if you create fraudulent transactions of your experience, you will be denied an account, or your account may be suspended, or you may face a lifetime ban.Finally, only verified accounts may provide Crewmate verification of another user’s experience. Charter companies may only verify experience directly obtained on their charter fleet. Education institutions such as American Sailing Association (ASA) or United States Sailing Association (US Sailing) may verify only their own students who earn their credentials through their education providers.

As the Sailing Resume Blockchain grows, it becomes more and more attractive to developers and companies to build new apps and solutions utilizing the underlying data. As an end user, you will only have to verify your wallet ownership to unlock these apps and solutions as all data is publicly available.
 
In order to provide data publicly, there has to be some way to ensure and prove that data is what you entered and what any other participant of the logbook entry verified (such as a crewmate or a certification provider). In other words, the data itself has to be tamper-proof. If there was no way to ensure data integrity, the underlying data would not be trusted or usable by anyone.
 
Blockchain, specifically cryptographic proofs and an immutable ledger, solve this problem perfectly. It also provides for individual privacy even though data is public.
 
This is the most exciting feature of the Sailing Resume Blockchain. Rather than locking up the data and relying upon Charter Rode to add endless features, we have created an ecosystem that encourages anyone to create apps, features, and solutions for the entire community. They are free to monetize these apps and solutions in any way that makes sense for them.
 
Don’t like the default Charter Rode resume format? No problem. A developer can create something completely different without having to create an entire logbook and entry system.

See questions above regarding what is a blockchain and is Charter Rode a public blockchain. Having publicly available data is at the core of blockchain technology. Charter Rode makes public the necessary information to ensure your Trusted Sailing Resume is accepted, and trusted by others, while still protecting your privacy if you don’t publicly share your key information, just the same as public blockchains such as Bitcoin.

The reason why Charter Rode is a blockchain is because blockchain technology, and its underlying components, methodologies, and designs, lends itself perfectly to the problem of insurance companies, charter companies, and other agencies trusting experience logged by a sailor in some cases many years or decades ago. By using these blockchain technologies, sailors now have a simple, secure, and trusted way to track, verify, and share their boating experience with anyone.

A new Sailing Resume Blockchain block of data is formed when there are around 1,000 unconfirmed (see transaction statuses below) transactions waiting to be published. This can take anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks depending upon the transaction volume (number of logbook entries made) by Charter Rode accounts. Get all your experience logged! When your transaction is in the unconfirmed or the confirmed status, it will appear in your Resume.

Charter Rode is for mariners, sailors, and boaters who are serious about tracking their experience. One of the reasons why a crewmate verification is trusted, is that each account must have their identity validated, and only one account per person is allowed. In other logbook systems, you can create another account if you have a different email address, no identity verification requirement. This means you can verify your own experience as a ‘crewmate’ and cheat the system. Identity verification is one of the components of the Trusted Sailing Resume and Sailing Resume Blockchain that makes Charter Rode secure and trusted.

Yes. If you do not share your public key and sailor ID then no one in the world will be able to tie your transactions (data) on Sailing Resume Blockchain to you. However, you will want to share and prove your identity for insurance companies, charter companies, and other agencies such as the US Coast Guard if you were to apply for a USCG Captains License. You may also choose to let the world know who you are, sharing your sailor ID and/or public key via your YouTube channel so that everyone may digitally follow your logbook!

Yes. Part of the Sailing Resume Blockchain’s security comes from the underlying blockchain and distributed ledger technologies. For example, once a new block (data) is published to the Sailing Resume Blockchain, it is immutable (unchangeable) on the storage devices that are used forever. In addition, when a new block is added to the Sailing Resume Blockchain, it is simultaneously published to multiple secure and immutable storage locations around the world. Each transaction within a block is cryptographically signed so that anyone with the public keys of the signing parties, which are also included in each transaction, may verify the authenticity of the data.

Before a transaction is confirmed (published into a new block), the Charter Rode network is secured using the latest in military grade encryption. ISO/IEC 27001:2013, IS/IEC 2700:2019, PCI:DSS v3.2.1, Level 1, and Cryptocurrency Security Standards (CCSS) are all employed to ensure data is secure and safe.

We know they can be confusing. The Sailing Resume Blockchain is like Bitcoin, each logbook entry you make becomes a transaction within a block on the Sailing Resume Blockchain. Every logbook entry goes through its own journey through the below statuses to eventually be committed on the Sailing Resume Blockchain and available for everyone in the world to see. Until your logbook entry is in the final confirmed status, it has not yet been securely and permanently added to the Sailing Resume Blockchain.

Great question! First you may ask what is an identity verification voucher code? All identity verifications cost 49 CRT (Charter Rode Token, see pricing page) or about $50 USD. This helps to ensure that we can invest in technology, people, and processes to prevent fraudulent accounts from ever being created. If you are invited by an existing Charter Rode account holder as a crewmate, or if a charter company or school, such as an ASA or US Sailing school or instructor, invites you to use Charter Rode, along with the invitation is an ID Voucher Code that you may use to receive a one-time complimentary identity verification.You may now be wondering why it is complimentary if someone else invites me, just make it free for everyone! By receiving an invitation from someone you know, we are implicitly adding an extra layer of security and verification of your identity. This is just not possible when someone shows up at the front door and says Hi, I’m Bob. Bottom line, if you don’t know anyone on Charter Rode yet, get an account and ask your friends to Venmo you if you send them invitations to recoup some of your investment.

Yes. Use Charter Rode to log your on-the-water experience. There is a section in your Resume that classifies your experience by Gross Tonnage (GT) which the US Coast Guard will ask you to document on your application. In addition, all the Charter Rode Resume time periods have been aligned with the US Coast Guards so that filling out your application is as simple as copy and paste. The test, however, that’s another matter! Good luck!

Two reasons. One, native apps are not needed as Charter Rode is simple and easy to use. To make Charter Rode feel like a native app on your iOS/Android hand-held or tablet device, sign in to Charter Rode on your device and navigate to the home screen. From there add a bookmark to your home screen and your iOS/Android device will create a native app for you.

Second, the fees charged through app stores are as high as 30% and we are doing everything we can to keep the Charter Rode fees as low as possible. As there is no splashy user interface or interactions required, there is no need to add another 30% tax to use in-app payments. Besides, the Charter Rode protocol is an open protocol, and anyone may build their own user interface. Check out the Developer docs if you are interested in embedding Charter Rode into your app!

Check out this article for more information on how to turn your favorite web links, like Charter Rode, into apps on your mobile devices.

Charter company verification through Charter Rode is the highest and most trusted verification. If you chartered a boat, Charter Rode will contact the charter company and verify your charter. If you did not charter a boat, use Crewmate verification if you had someone else on the boat with you. If you were out by yourself on your or a friend’s boat, use Self verification. Using Self verification may lead to insurance companies, charter companies, or other agencies requiring other proof of experience. For example, an on-the-water checkout with a licensed captain in order to bareboat charter.