Living aboard
The boat is home — pressurized and powered around the clock while you're at work or away for the weekend. You want the same picture of the boat from the saloon and from the office, and the same protection as any unattended boat when you leave.
What can go wrong
The slow, boring failures — not scare stories.
A line fails while you're at work
Freshwater plumbing is under pressure all day. A fitting that lets go at 9am runs unattended until you're back — hours of water into the bilge or a locker.
Slow drips behind panels
A weeping water heater or a hose seep hides behind joinery until something is soaked and the smell shows up. The early signal is the one you never see.
The bank quietly loses capacity
House batteries age. You find out during an outage — unless something was watching the voltage curve the whole time.
A week away, no idea what state it's in
Haul-out, a work trip, visiting family. The boat sits and you're left guessing.
How DockNeighbor covers it
Each risk maps to something that ships today, with the plan it needs called out honestly.
Catch leaks early, where they start
Leak sensors under the water heater, the head and the galley sink report the moment their probes get wet. They are sealed, run for years on a battery, and reach the station from behind any panel. Dockside covers 2; Weekender covers a whole boat's worth.
Bound the worst case on the hookup
With a LinkTap valve on the dock spigot, every open carries a volume or duration limit, and a flood alarm closes it on its own — so a burst line ends bounded, not running all day. The station reads the valve over the boat's network, like any partner device.
Watch the bank and its trend
A voltage sensor on the house bank — or the one-box unit that watches battery, bilge float and shore power together — alarms on a threshold or a fast drop, and the history shows the slow slide before it strands you (2 years on Dockside, 3 years on Weekender).
The same view aboard or away
Readings come through the station and the cloud, so the app shows the same boat from the saloon and from the office. An alarm reaches your phone with the app closed, then the neighbors you marked if you haven't answered. Weekender adds SMS and WhatsApp for the alerts that can't be missed.
Share it with your partner
Add the people who share the boat with real roles — Full Admin or Monitor & Control — so everyone aboard can see and operate it from their own account. Dockside includes one co-owner seat; Weekender shares with up to 5 crew members and Voyager up to 10. Being invited is always free.
The setup
Small battery-powered sensors, bought once. If your marina runs a DockNeighbor Station, they are the whole install.
Recommended hardware
- Battery, bilge and shore power in one box — near the house bank, one device slot~$62
- Water leak sensor ×2–3 — water heater, head, galley~$26 each
- Battery voltage sensor — if you'd rather watch the bank on its own~$54–88
- LinkTap valve on the dock spigot — a partner device, Weekender and up
Prices are approximate retail. You already have internet aboard, so if your marina has no station, your own plugs straight into it.
No station within range? Bring your own aboard: the M2 ($99) on the boat’s internet, or the M2-4G ($149) with your own SIM. Which one, and where to buy →
Recommended plan
Weekender — $7/mo · $60/yr per vehicle
A liveaboard build is usually more than 2 sensors — leak sensors in three places plus the bank — and Weekender covers up to 15 devices, the valve and other partner devices, SMS and WhatsApp alerts, crew sharing and 3 years of history. If the one-box unit and a single leak sensor are all you need, Dockside ($20/yr) covers them.
Every vehicle can try one month of Dockside free, started from the plan badge in the app's Settings › Vessel.