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Can an app answer questions from my own boat manuals?
The Purser · Manuals & documentsInstead of FirstMate, or a folder of PDFs in Google Drive· Current as of 26 September 2026
Yes. Shimbiri reads the manuals for your boat, and the Purser answers your question from them with the page numbers, so you can open the manufacturer’s own procedure and check it.
Upload the PDFs once. Scanned manuals are read as well, and every manual on the boat becomes searchable in one place.
What it does
- Upload your manuals as PDFs; scanned pages are read as well
- Search every manual on the boat at once
- Ask in plain words and get the answer with its page references
- Open the manual at the exact pages the answer came from
- Search with a photo, or ask by voice
Coming soon
The Purser on the web is coming soon: ask a plain-English question and get the answer from the manufacturer’s manuals, with the official source linked.
See what’s coming →Seen at sea
A real answer on Shimbiri: asked what to check first when the engine overheating alarm came on, the Purser answered from the boat’s own Volvo D3 manual and cited pages 53, 55 and 71.
What you need
Upload your manuals and ask. No hardware needed.