Hands-free — talking to theONE

The phrases the app answers, and what it says back.

You can log to theONE without touching the screen. It is built for the moments when both hands are busy — a nozzle in one hand at the fuel dock, a wheel in the other in a following sea, gloves on in the rain.

Every phrase has to include the app's name. That is Apple's rule, not ours: iOS needs it to tell theONE apart from every other app on the phone. "Log an incident" on its own goes nowhere. "Log an incident with theONE" works. If you want a shorter trigger of your own, record one — the last step below.

Nothing here needs a signal. These write to the boat's record on the phone, the same record the app reads. Offshore, in a dead spot, in airplane mode: same behaviour.

Steps

1. Man overboard

   “Man overboard on theONE” — also “MOB on theONE”, “Emergency MOB theONE”, “theONE drop MOB pin”.

   Drops a pinned GPS position AND opens the Emergency drawer, so the Mayday script and the recovery checklist are already on screen. Every man-overboard phrase goes here — there is no quiet version to say by mistake.

2. Asking it something

   “How much fuel in theONE” — also “Read fuel from theONE”, “theONE fuel level”.

   “theONE vessel status” — also “Read vessel status from theONE”, “Status from theONE”. Name, homeport, fuel, water and house battery. A reading theONE does not have is left out of the sentence rather than guessed at. A level is read as the level now only when the boat's sender gave it in the last five minutes; an older reading, or one typed in by hand, is said with its age — “fuel 62% as of 3 hours ago”.

3. Logging as it happens

   “Log an issue with theONE” — also “Report a problem to theONE”, “Something’s wrong on theONE”, “theONE issue”. Say what needs fixing — “the port raw water pump is weeping” — and it opens an issue on the boat’s record for you to finish later.

   “Log an incident with theONE” — also “Log a grounding with theONE”. Captures the position and opens a record for you to finish later.

   “Log an observation in theONE” — for something you noticed but haven't judged yet: a sound, a smell, a reading. It files at watch level; you grade it later with the record in front of you.

   “Jot a note in theONE” — dictation straight to your jot inbox, for the thing you'll forget by the time you're tied up.

   Watch changes have no built-in phrase — theONE has ten. Logging a watch change still works from the Shortcuts app, a Lock Screen button, or a phrase you record yourself (last step below).

4. Logging hours and fuel

   “Log run hours in theONE” — also “Log engine hours in theONE”, “theONE log hours”. Say the hours and it adds them to the meter.

   On a boat with one hour-tracked engine it just uses it. With more than one it asks which, and names them, so you don't have to guess what it calls yours. Then it waits for your answer: say the name and it logs the hours you already gave — you don't start over. Anything you've pinned to hour tracking is offered here too.

   “Log fuel in theONE” — also “Log a fill in theONE”. Say the gallons pumped, not the tank total after. If theONE doesn't know your tank capacity yet it will say so and hold the fill — you won't retype it.

5. Position, out loud

   “Where am I on theONE” — also “theONE position”.

   Reads back the place name and your latitude and longitude to two decimals, which is the right precision to say into a radio. If there's no live fix it tells you it's falling back to your homeport rather than reading a stale number as though it were current.

6. On a locked phone

   Every one of these except man overboard asks you to unlock the phone first when it is locked — reading the fuel or the boat's status, where am I, and every log, track, leg and trip action. So nobody else holding your locked phone hears about the boat or writes to her record by voice.

   Man overboard is the exception on purpose: theONE puts no lock of its own on it.

   With theONE's own app lock on (Settings → Privacy & Lock), none of the others runs by voice, even on an unlocked phone: theONE says its app lock is on and asks you to open it — the app then asks for Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode before anything shows — and to do it there. Man overboard still works. "Jot a note" on the Apple Watch asks for the watch to be unlocked first, like the phone's.

7. If it says your role can't do that

   Talking to theONE follows your role on the boat, the same as its screens do. A guest can't log anything by voice. A vendor can log observations, and nothing else — run hours are not a vendor's to log (the cloud refuses them). Crew can log the rest — issues, incidents, fuel, jots, the logbook, tracks, and starting or ending a leg — but ending the trip takes the captain, a manager or the owner, as it does on the screen. When your role can't, theONE says so and saves nothing.

   Man overboard is never refused: any phone aboard drops the pin. A guest's pin carries the guest's own trip, so the boat's cloud takes it as it takes the crew's.

8. If it says it could not save

   You will occasionally hear “theONE could not save that — it is not on record.” That is the app being straight with you, not a glitch to ignore: the entry is NOT stored, and you need to open theONE and enter it there.

   It happens while the app is recovering a backup or repairing its files. It is rare. The reason you are told at all is that a voice log gives you nothing to look at — if we stayed quiet, you would find out at the next cold start, days later, with the entry gone.

9. Making your own trigger

   theONE has ten spoken phrases and cannot have an eleventh. That is Apple's limit on every app, not a gap in theONE. It is why there is no phrase for starting or ending a leg, ending the trip, or starting and stopping track recording — those actions all exist, they just don't come with words attached.

   These have no built-in phrase: log a watch change · start and stop track recording · start the leg · end the leg · end the trip.

   The fix is better than the limit: iOS Settings → Siri → Shortcuts, or the Shortcuts app, lets you record any phrase you like for any of theONE's actions — including a bare “man overboard” with no app name. Worth doing for the one you'd reach for in a hurry, and worth testing at the dock rather than finding out offshore.

   Every action is in the Shortcuts app whether or not it has a spoken phrase, and from there you can put it on the Lock Screen or the Home Screen with iOS's own Shortcuts widget. theONE does not ship a widget of its own for each action.

   One to be deliberate about: ending the trip closes every leg still open behind it. That is exactly why it has no built-in phrase — a misheard "end the trip" is expensive. If you record one, pick words you would not say by accident on a busy bridge.

Related

• MOB (Man Overboard) — what happens when you tap itThe pin, the history, and why this is on every screen.
• The Emergency drawer — what's there and when to use itMayday assist, nearest harbors, USCG districts.
• Mayday and emergency referenceFind the Mayday assist, the marine distress reference, and the float plan share.

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