Terms of Service

Effective: 2026-06-01 · Operator: Proteus Marine Intelligence Systems, LLC (Maryland) · Contact: legal@proteus-marine-intelligence.com

1. Agreement to these Terms

These Terms of Service (the "Terms") govern your use of the Proteus Crew website at proteus-marine-intelligence.com, the application at app.proteus-marine-intelligence.com, any native mobile applications we distribute, and the related services (collectively, the "Service").

By creating an account, paying for a subscription, joining a boat program through a shareable crew link, or otherwise using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

If you use the Service on behalf of a yacht club, college sailing team, or other organization, you represent that you have authority to bind that organization, and "you" includes that organization.

We use a clickwrap acceptance gate to record your agreement to these Terms, the Privacy Policy, and (for crew members) the Crew Member Acknowledgement. If any of these documents is updated in a way that materially affects your rights, you will be asked to re-accept on your next session.

2. The Service

Proteus Crew is sailing crew scheduling and availability software. A skipper creates a boat program, enters the boat's racing calendar (or imports a club calendar from our pre-loaded library), and invites crew to RSVP for each race. Crew respond In, Maybe, or Out. The skipper sees a roster view across the season.

That is the scope. The Service does not provide navigation, weather routing, safety alerts, tactical advice, race-course information, crew-role or position assignments, any health or readiness evaluations of crew, or any decision-making about whether to race, who to assign to what role, or whether crew composition is adequate for the conditions of a given race. Decisions about whether to race and who is on the boat remain solely the skipper's responsibility under the Racing Rules of Sailing and applicable safety regulations.

Crew members are separately required to confirm they understand the Service is not a safety device. See the Crew Member Acknowledgement.

3. Eligibility and accounts

Age. You must be at least 13 years old to use the Service.

Skippers. Skippers create an account during checkout through our Merchant of Record, then sign in at app.proteus-marine-intelligence.com via magic link or password (if set). You are responsible for safeguarding your sign-in credentials and for any activity on your account.

Crew. Crew access the Service through a shareable per-program link a skipper sends them. Crew do not create accounts.

Crew under 18. If a crew member is between 13 and 18, a parent or guardian must agree to these Terms and to the Crew Member Acknowledgement on the crew member's behalf. Skippers are responsible for confirming this consent before inviting crew under 18 to their program.

College program tier. Free-tier college sailing programs may have crew members who are minors. By creating a college-tier program, the skipper or head coach represents that all participating crew are at least 18 years old, OR that parental consent has been obtained for each participating crew member under 18.

4. Subscriptions, billing, and refunds

4.1 How subscriptions are sold

Our order process is conducted by our online reseller Paddle.com Inc. ("Paddle"). Paddle.com is the Merchant of Record for all our orders. Paddle provides all customer service inquiries and handles returns. Paddle is the seller of record for purposes of invoicing, payment processing, sales-tax / VAT collection, and remittance. Proteus is the licensor of the Service under these Terms. Paddle's terms of sale govern the payment transaction itself; these Terms govern your use of the Service.

4.2 Plans and pricing

Current plans and prices are published at proteus-marine-intelligence.com/#pricing. We may change prices at any time, but we will give existing subscribers at least 30 days' notice before any price change affects their next renewal. The Founding Skipper price is locked for life as described in Appendix A.

Definition of "season." For purposes of these Terms and the marketing materials referenced above, the word "season" refers to your annual subscription term, a 12-month period that commences on the date your subscription begins and renews automatically as described in §4.3. The word is used because Proteus Crew is sold to sailing programs and "season" is the sailor's everyday word for an annual cycle of racing. It carries no other meaning here, and in particular is not tied to any specific calendar window, regional racing calendar, or organizing-authority schedule.

4.3 Automatic renewal (Maryland Automatic Renewal Law disclosure)

Your subscription automatically renews on a 12-month cycle until you cancel. When you subscribe, you are explicitly consenting to this automatic renewal in a separate checkbox at checkout, not just by accepting these Terms.

At each renewal, Paddle will charge the payment method on file the then-current price for your tier (or, if you are a Founding Skipper, the locked Founding price as set forth in Appendix A), plus any applicable taxes.

We will send you a renewal reminder by email between 15 and 45 days before each annual renewal, in compliance with the Maryland Automatic Renewal Law (Md. Code Comm. Law §14-1228 et seq.). The reminder will identify the renewal date, the amount to be charged, the cancellation deadline, and a direct link to cancel.

4.4 How to cancel

You can cancel at any time, by any of the following methods, each of which is at least as easy as signing up:

In-app: Account settings → Subscription → "Cancel Subscription"
Customer portal: the link in your welcome email and renewal reminder takes you to the Paddle customer portal where you can cancel directly
Email: billing@proteus-marine-intelligence.com, we will process within one business day

Cancellation takes effect at the end of your then-current billing period; you retain access until then.

4.5 Refunds

14-day money-back guarantee for new subscriptions. If you are unhappy for any reason within the first 14 days of your initial paid subscription, email billing@proteus-marine-intelligence.com and we will refund you in full. Renewals are not refundable except as set forth below.

Renewals. If you cancel after a renewal has been charged, we will refund the renewal in full if you cancel within 14 days of the renewal charge and have not used the Service materially during that period. After 14 days, renewals are non-refundable except where required by law.

See our standalone Refund Policy for full details.

4.6 Free college tier

Verified college sailing teams may apply for the free college tier as described at proteus-marine-intelligence.com/#college. The college tier has no payment, no auto-renewal, and is subject to annual reverification. We reserve the right to require evidence of college affiliation (NIL roster, athletic-department letter, .edu domain match) and to revoke access at any time if eligibility is not maintained or the Service is misused. No refund is due to a college tier program because no payment has been made.

5. Acceptable use

You agree NOT to:

Use the Service in connection with anything illegal.
Use the Service in any safety-critical capacity. The Service is not designed for, certified for, or marketed for safety-critical use. See §10.
Probe, scan, or test the security or integrity of the Service, except via coordinated disclosure to security@proteus-marine-intelligence.com.
Interfere with other users' use of the Service.
Send spam, harass others, or harvest contact information.
Reverse-engineer, decompile, or disassemble the Service, except to the limited extent applicable law allows you to and you cannot waive that right by contract.
Build a competing product by scraping, systematically extracting, or republishing data from the Service.
Use automated systems (bots, scrapers, crawlers) to access the Service, except for standard search-engine indexing of public pages.
Resell, sublicense, lease, or commercially redistribute the Service or access to the Service.
Misrepresent your identity or your authority to act on behalf of a boat program, a yacht club, or a college sailing team.
Upload data of any third party (for example, adding a crew member) without that third party's permission.

We may suspend or terminate access for material breach of this section. See §14.

6. Your content

You retain ownership of all content you enter into the Service, boat names, sail numbers, club identifiers, season calendars, crew names and contact information you have permission to enter, RSVPs, race notes, and similar.

You grant Proteus a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, transmit, process, and display your content solely to operate, secure, and improve the Service for you and your boat program, and to comply with legal obligations. We do not provide your content to AI training systems, and we contractually bind our subprocessors to handle your content only for the purposes described in the Privacy Policy.

You are responsible for the legality and accuracy of content you enter, including whether you have permission to enter another person's information.

7. Intellectual property

The Service, including its software, source code, branding, design, documentation, and data structures, is the property of Proteus or its licensors and is protected by copyright, trademark, trade-secret, and other intellectual-property laws. These Terms grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to use the Service in accordance with these Terms. No other IP rights are transferred.

You may not use the "Proteus," "Proteus Crew," or "Proteus Marine" names or logos without our prior written permission, except to identify the Service as the tool you are using.

8. Privacy

Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal information. By using the Service, you agree to that handling.

9. Third-party services and venue data

The Service integrates with third-party services including Paddle (sales and payments as Merchant of Record), Supabase (database, authentication, edge functions), Resend (transactional email), Vercel (hosting), Cloudflare (DNS), and Apple (App Store distribution, where applicable). Each third party has its own terms and policies. We are not responsible for the acts or omissions of third-party providers.

The Service includes a library of yacht-club race calendars compiled from publicly available sources, including the Chesapeake Bay Yacht Racing Association ("CBYRA") Green Book and individual club websites. This data is provided for your convenience and may contain errors, omissions, or be out of date. Always confirm event details with the official Notice of Race and sailing instructions published by the organizing authority before relying on calendar entries.

10. Disclaimers

The Service is provided "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, express or implied, including without limitation the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or available at any particular time. We do not warrant that race data, calendar imports, push notifications, or email reminders will be timely, complete, or correct.

Sailing-specific disclaimer. The Service does not provide and is not a substitute for navigation, weather routing, tactical advice, safety alerts, race-course information, emergency communication, or any operational decision-making for sailing. Use of the Service does not replace the skipper's judgment, the Racing Rules of Sailing, COLREGS, USCG regulations, or any organizing authority's safety requirements.

11. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Proteus and its officers, members, employees, contractors, and affiliates are not liable for any indirect, incidental, consequential, special, exemplary, or punitive damages, including without limitation loss of profits, loss of data, loss of goodwill, or business interruption, arising out of or relating to the Service, regardless of the legal theory and whether or not we have been advised of the possibility of such damages.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, our total cumulative liability to you for any and all claims arising out of or relating to the Service is the greater of (a) the amount you paid us for the Service in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) U.S. $500.

The limitations in this §11 do not apply to (i) liability that cannot be limited as a matter of law (including gross negligence, willful misconduct, and fraud where applicable law preserves those claims), or (ii) the parties' indemnification obligations in §13.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of certain damages or warranties. In those jurisdictions, our liability is limited to the maximum extent permitted by law.

12. Beta features and experimental functionality

From time to time we may make beta, alpha, or experimental features available to some or all users. Such features may be unstable, may be modified or discontinued at any time, and are provided "AS IS" with no service-level commitments. Don't rely on beta features for anything important.

13. Indemnification

13.1 By you

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Proteus and its officers, members, employees, contractors, and affiliates from any third-party claim arising out of (a) your use of the Service in violation of these Terms, (b) content you upload to the Service, (c) your violation of any third party's rights, including privacy or intellectual-property rights, or (d) your representations regarding crew under 18 in §3.

13.2 By Proteus

Proteus will defend you against any third-party claim that your authorized use of the Service infringes that third party's United States patent, copyright, trademark, or trade-secret rights, and will pay any damages or settlement amounts finally awarded against you in such claim, provided that (i) you promptly notify us in writing, (ii) you give us sole control of the defense and any settlement, and (iii) the claim does not arise from your modifications, your content, your combination of the Service with non-Proteus products or services, or your use of the Service outside the scope of these Terms.

If your use of the Service becomes, or in our opinion is likely to become, the subject of an IP infringement claim, we may at our option (a) procure the right for you to continue using the Service, (b) modify the Service to be non-infringing, or (c) terminate the Service and refund you a prorated portion of any prepaid unused fees. This §13.2 states our sole liability and your exclusive remedy for any IP infringement claim by a third party.

14. Suspension and termination

You can stop using the Service at any time. Cancel your subscription as described in §4.4.

We may suspend or terminate your access to the Service:

(a) for material breach of these Terms by you, including violations of §5;
(b) for non-payment;
(c) for suspected fraud, account takeover, or other security concerns;
(d) to protect the Service or other users from imminent harm;
(e) if we discontinue the Service generally (in which case we will refund any prepaid unused portion of your subscription); or
(f) as required by law or valid legal process.

Except for items (a), (c), (d), or (f) above, we will give you at least 14 days' notice before termination and will prorate any refund of prepaid unused subscription fees.

Survival. The following sections survive termination: §4 (for amounts already incurred), §6 (your retention of ownership), §7 (intellectual property), §10 (disclaimers), §11 (limitation of liability), §13 (indemnification), §15 (governing law and disputes), §17 (general).

15. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Maryland, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-laws principles.

15.1 Forum

Any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service that is not resolved informally will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Maryland, and you consent to personal jurisdiction in those courts.

15.2 Class-action waiver

To the extent permitted by law, disputes are resolved on an individual basis only. No class, collective, or representative actions. If a court finds this waiver unenforceable in any respect, the affected dispute will proceed in court (under §15.1) but the rest of these Terms remain in effect.

15.3 Informal resolution first

Before filing any action, you agree to contact us at legal@proteus-marine-intelligence.com and give us 30 days to resolve the dispute informally.

16. Apple App Store rider

If you accessed the Service through the Apple App Store, the following additional terms apply between you and Proteus (Apple is not a party to these Terms):

These Terms are between you and Proteus only. Apple is not responsible for the Service or its content.
Apple has no obligation to provide maintenance or support for the Service. We are solely responsible.
In the event of any failure of the Service to conform to any applicable warranty, you may notify Apple, who will refund the purchase price of the App (if any) to you. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Apple has no other warranty obligation whatsoever for the Service.
Apple is not responsible for addressing any claims by you or any third party relating to the Service, including (i) product liability claims, (ii) any claim that the Service fails to conform to any applicable legal or regulatory requirement, and (iii) claims arising under consumer-protection or similar legislation.
Apple is not responsible for the investigation, defense, settlement, or discharge of any third-party claim that the Service infringes intellectual-property rights. §13.2 governs as between you and Proteus.
You represent that (i) you are not located in a country that is subject to a U.S. Government embargo or that has been designated by the U.S. Government as a "terrorist supporting" country, and (ii) you are not listed on any U.S. Government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
Apple and Apple's subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms, and upon your acceptance of these Terms Apple will have the right (and will be deemed to have accepted the right) to enforce these Terms against you as a third-party beneficiary, though it has no obligation to do so.

17. General

Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, the Crew Member Acknowledgement (for crew), Appendix A (for Founding Skippers), and any Order Form executed by us and you, constitute the entire agreement between you and Proteus regarding the Service.

Changes to these Terms. We may update these Terms from time to time. Material changes will be notified by email to skippers at least 30 days before they take effect, and will trigger a re-acceptance prompt in the app via the clickwrap gate. Your continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance.

Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our written consent. We may assign these Terms in connection with a merger, acquisition, financing, or sale of substantially all of our assets.

Severability. If any provision of these Terms is found unenforceable, the rest remain in effect.

No waiver. Our failure to enforce any right or provision is not a waiver of that right or provision.

Force majeure. Neither party is liable for delay or failure to perform due to causes beyond its reasonable control, including acts of God, natural disasters, war, terrorism, civil unrest, government action, labor disputes, or third-party service outages.

Notices. Notices to Proteus must be sent to legal@proteus-marine-intelligence.com. Notices to you may be sent to the email address on your account.

18. Contact

Proteus Marine Intelligence Systems, LLC
State of formation: Maryland, USA
Email: legal@proteus-marine-intelligence.com
Phone: +1 (410) 571-4932

Appendix A, Founding Skipper Lifetime Price Lock-In

This Appendix forms part of these Terms and applies to skippers who subscribed under the Founding Skipper plan, defined as the first twenty-five (25) paid subscriptions sold on or before 2026-06-30 at the published Founding price.

A.1 Locked price. Your annual renewal price is locked at the Founding Skipper price you paid at initial subscription. Proteus will not increase your annual price for as long as you maintain a continuous active subscription, even if the published Standard price changes.

A.2 What "continuous" means. A lapse of more than 30 days between subscription periods (whether due to cancellation, payment failure, or expiration) ends the price lock. If you re-subscribe after a lapse longer than 30 days, the then-current Standard price applies.

A.3 What's not included. The price lock applies to the subscription tier you purchased as a Founding Skipper. It does not apply to add-on products, multi-boat plans, club-tier plans, or any future product we offer that is not a continuation of the Founding Skipper tier. We will make commercially reasonable efforts to offer Founding Skippers a meaningful upgrade path to any successor tier.

A.4 Founding Skipper benefits in addition to price lock.

Founding Skipper badge in your skipper view
Direct email line to the Proteus founding team for feature requests
One mid-season feedback call by mutual scheduling

A.5 Survival. This Appendix survives any change to the public pricing page or these Terms. We may amend §A.4 (benefits) prospectively on 30 days' notice; we may not amend §A.1 (locked price) or §A.2 (continuity definition) other than to your benefit.

A.6 Transferability. The Founding Skipper price lock is personal to the individual skipper account holder. It does not transfer with a boat sale or to another sailor.