Crew Share Calculator

The argument this exists to stop

A boat takes its share of what is left after the trip’s costs, not of the gross. That order is not a detail. It is the difference between a fair settlement and one where the crew paid part of the fuel bill twice.

Take the gross first and the boat’s percentage comes partly out of money that went straight back out of the dock — fuel, ice, bait, the offload. The crew never saw it and never will, and they have still been charged a share of it. Do it the other way and everybody is arguing about a number somebody worked out on the ride in.

This does it in the order your boat settled on, and shows every step, so the settlement is a sheet you can hand across rather than a figure people have to take on trust.

What is yours and what nobody can guess

The costs that come off the top. Fuel, ice, bait, grub, the offload, the truck. Some boats put gear in and some do not. Some carry the ice and some split it.

The boat’s share, and what it comes off. A percentage means nothing on its own. The same number against the gross and against the net after costs produces two settlements that can differ by thousands on a good trip, and both boats calling it the same thing.

The lay. A captain on a share and a half against a deckhand on one is 1.5 to 1, and every boat sets that itself — by seat, by years aboard, by what somebody does when the gear comes up. A greenhorn on a half is a decision. So is a cook who works a full share.

None of those four is a trade convention that software can supply. They were settled on this boat, possibly by somebody who has been dead twenty years, and they are the reason a subscription cannot do this job. A platform serving every boat on the coast has to choose a default for each one, and the moment it does, it is settling somebody else’s trips wrong.

Whole cents from the first line to the last

Divide $9,412.77 across four people on lays of 1.5, 1, 1 and 0.5, and the exact shares carry fractions of a cent. Round each one where it falls and the four no longer add back up to what the catch made. It comes out a penny or two short, or over.

Nobody notices on a slip of paper at the dock. Over a season, across a crew that talks, somebody does.

Every figure here is counted in whole cents from the first line to the last, and the spare pennies from an uneven split go to the biggest lays. The shares always add back to the money the trip made, and the sheet says so on the page instead of leaving you to add it up yourself.

What it replaces

The notebook in the wheelhouse, and the twenty minutes at the dock with a calculator while everybody waits and nobody is quite watching. Or a spreadsheet that works fine until the trip has an unusual cost in it, at which point somebody types over a formula.

You put your costs, your boat share and your lays in once. Every trip after that is the catch, the costs and who was aboard.

Who it is for

Commercial boats and charter operations — anywhere the money from a trip divides between the boat and the people who worked it, on terms this boat set.

What it will not do

It will not suggest a lay or a boat share. Not for a captain, not for a greenhorn, not for the boat. There is no rate here to recommend. What each seat is worth on this boat is the thing you settled, and settling it is the part of the job nobody else can do for you.

It knows nothing about the price of fish. It divides what you tell it the trip made. It does not value a catch, does not price a species and does not know what the house paid last week.

It will not print a number it cannot stand behind. When the costs come to more than the trip made, it says so and stops rather than handing somebody a negative share and letting the sheet look finished. Where a line cannot be read, it names the line and what shape it could not handle.

Nothing you type leaves the boat. The arithmetic runs in your browser. There is no account, no upload, and nothing sent anywhere. Close the tab and it is gone.