Float Plan Template: What to Include and Who to Send It To

A float plan is a short document that tells someone ashore where you are going, who is aboard, and when to worry. If you are overdue, it gives rescuers a description of the boat, a route to search, and a timeline, which can cut a search from days to hours. This guide gives you a copyable float plan template, explains each field, and shows how modern route planners generate and email one automatically.

#What a float plan is, and who gets it

The float plan is held by a trusted person ashore: a spouse, a friend, a marina office. You do not file it with the Coast Guard; they have no system to hold routine float plans. Instead, your shore contact uses it to raise the alarm and hand rescuers everything they need if you do not check in on time. The US Coast Guard Auxiliary's Float Plan Central publishes the classic printable form if you prefer paper.

#The template

Copy this into a note or an email and fill it in before you leave. Short and complete beats long and half-filled.

• Vessel: name, type, length, hull color, engine, registration number, distinguishing features.
• People aboard: names, ages, phone numbers, relevant medical notes, and whether everyone has a lifejacket.
• Route: departure point and time, planned waypoints or route description, destination and expected arrival time, planned stops.
• Communications: phone numbers aboard, VHF channels monitored, tracker or share link if you have one.
• Safety gear: EPIRB or PLB, flares, raft or dinghy, first aid.
• Overdue instructions: "If you have not heard from me by [time], call [local emergency / coast guard number] and give them this plan."

#Filling it in well

The route section is where most float plans are weakest. "Heading up the coast" gives searchers a hundred miles of ambiguity; a waypoint list gives them a line to fly along. If you plan the trip in a route planner, your waypoints, distances, and ETAs already exist, so include them exactly. Our step-by-step route guide covers building that plan in the first place.

#Apps that build the float plan for you

Any route planner that knows your waypoints, speed, and departure time already holds 80 percent of a float plan. The Marine OS route planner turns a saved route into a printable float plan and can email it directly to your shore contact, with the vessel, speed, departure time, every waypoint with coordinates, per-leg distances and bearings, and a share link where they can watch progress on the chart. When you track your trip in Underway mode, that same link shows your position near-live.

#Make it part of the routine

A float plan works best alongside the rest of the safety stack: an anchor alarm for the night, a tracking option so your contact can see progress instead of guessing, and a weather window chosen so the plan survives contact with the forecast.

#Frequently asked questions

Copy the template, pick your shore contact, and make the "arrived safe" message a habit. For the planning half, start with how to plan a boat route or compare the best marine route planner apps.