Why this is a tackle question, not a paperwork question
Most setup forms on most websites are administrative friction — the site needs your address to ship something, the platform needs your phone for two-factor. Your vessel profile is not that. Every field here is an input variable in the model that builds your briefings. A blank field doesn't just look incomplete; it removes a specific piece of reasoning Sedna would otherwise apply to your trip.
Concrete example. If you tell Sedna you run a 38-foot express with 300 gallons of diesel, she can sanity-check a 60-mile run to the warm side of an eddy against your range with reserve. If the fuel field is empty, she has to either skip that calculation entirely or hedge with a generic warning. Same logic for hull type (head sea behavior), Starlink (whether you can reach back out mid-trip), and electronics (which screens she can reference when she's coaching you to a number). None of this is decoration. It's all load-bearing.
What each section is actually feeding
Name, phone, email, years of offshore experience. The experience field matters more than it looks — it sets the floor for how much basic context Sedna includes versus assumes. A 20-year captain doesn't need the bait shop's hours; a first-season captain might. Sedna calibrates the whole briefing around that one number.
Name, code, home port, region, type, length, hull, engine, fuel, Starlink, electronics. This block is the physics layer of every briefing. Range and reserve come from fuel and length. Sea-state suitability comes from hull and engine. The home port and region anchor every distance, every tide reference, every fleet-activity comparison. The vessel code (3–4 letters) is what shows up in your briefing header and the catch log — pick it once and it follows you everywhere.
Primary species sets the spine of your briefings. Opportunistic species are how Sedna decides what else to flag when conditions line up — a striper captain who also checked "false albacore" gets a different October briefing than one who didn't. Be honest about what you'd actually take a shot at; Sedna only volunteers what you've told her you'd care about.
Trolling, jigging, live-bait, chunking, bottom — pick everything you do regularly. This is what Sedna pattern-matches against when she's recommending a method for a given window. Months active is the calendar she uses to know when to start volunteering proactive briefings versus when to assume you've put the boat away.
Trips per season, preferred departure time, permits held, comfortable sea state, comm preference. Sea state is the one captains often under-fill — Sedna uses it to decide whether to even bring up a window that's marginal for your stated tolerance. If you're a 4-foot-or-less captain, she'll quietly skip the 6-foot Saturday and surface the better Sunday window first.
The vessel photo shows up in your sidebar and on every Angler Card and Captain's Report your boat produces. The captain photo lands in the same places. This is what your guests see when the trip report hits their inbox — treat it as branding, not bookkeeping. A clean shot of the boat under power, and a head-and-shoulders shot of you, is plenty.
Where to fill it in
You filled most of this in at enrollment. Anything you want to revisit or refine lives in Account → Vessel Profile from the sidebar. Edits take effect immediately — the next briefing you request will be composed against the updated profile.
Your profile is your brand asset. The vessel name, the vessel photo, and the captain photo are what your paying client sees on every Angler Card and trip report your boat produces. They become trip souvenirs that get framed, posted, and forwarded. Treat the profile fields the way you'd treat your dock signage — once, properly, and the marketing happens by itself for the rest of the season.
Permits and styles drive credibility. If you hold an HMS Charter permit and run charter trips, check it — the briefings Sedna writes for your boat will reference the legal frame you actually operate in (size limits, retention rules, reporting obligations) instead of the recreational defaults. Same for your fishing styles. A charter captain who runs trolling spreads gets recommendations that respect the spread, not generic single-rod advice.