First Mate was built aboard Black Rose, the Balance 526 catamaran I own.
By the time she was commissioned, everything I knew about her was spread across more than 500 documents in 55 folders — build sheets, manuals, schematics and receipts — and across a handful of apps: Dropbox, Excel, Claude, ChatGPT, email, iPhone Reminders, WhatsApp. Each was good on its own, but none of them was built around the boat. There had to be a better way!
Getting the files into one place turned out to be the easy part. Plenty of owners already point Claude or ChatGPT at a folder of files and have it fill in a spreadsheet. That was my first step too, and I hit its limits fast. The real challenge was organizing everything that had to happen, in order: flagging, insurance, provisioning, checking everything aboard for safety, spares. I needed a shopping list I could share with my wife, Aneke. I needed to work through the commissioning and spares checklists and be sure I hadn't missed anything. And all of it under a time crunch to get sailing and cross the Atlantic. Some of you have already been there; some of you are still waiting for that day.
Then I needed to share some of this with other people. Giving a captain access, for instance, so they know everything about the boat they need to without my emailing it piece by piece. Add them to the boat and they have it: certificates, flagging documents, what was serviced last and what's due next.
A chat window also couldn't tell me what was actually aboard. I wanted certainty that a specific part was on the boat, not a guess — so First Mate lets me take a picture of a receipt, or of the item itself, and file it against her systems or drop it straight onto the shopping list. I didn't want to do any of this in front of a computer. I wanted to be sailing ⛵! And I didn't want to fall behind on the investment by missing a service date or forgetting one of the checks my captain advised, so the maintenance schedule and those checks live in the same record and remind me. A chat forgets between sessions. The record doesn't.
I'm a software engineer, and I'd spent my career building commercial software integration platforms, so I knew what that better way looked like: one place for everything about the boat, and an AI guide that answers from it, shows where each answer came from, and helps in the moments I'm not sure how best to organize something. So I built it. The goal is to make managing everything else simple — for now, for the years ahead, and for the day someone else owns her. When that day comes she'll carry all her records, documentation and pictures in one place, not spread across half a dozen services. That makes the eventual sale simpler, and it gives the next owner the confidence to carry on the programs I painstakingly put in place.
Every video on this site is Black Rose — her real equipment, manuals and service history.
First Mate is made by Atrim LLC and is in early access with a small group of Balance owners.
Thank you to Dean Paarman at Balance, to Josh Solomon, my captain, and to the first owners aboard for their own valuable feedback. It has shaped what you see here — keep it coming.
Clay Roach, owner of Black Rose