Ballast keeps your boat in your iCloud account, so every iPhone, iPad and Mac signed in to it shows the same boat. Without iCloud, your boat stays on the one device.
Open Ballast and it syncs with iCloud first, which usually takes a few seconds. If your boat is in iCloud, it arrives. If there’s nothing there yet, Ballast starts a new boat for you.
While it waits, Ballast says what’s holding it up:
You can also turn off iCloud Sync from that screen and use Ballast on this device alone.
When you turn on iCloud Sync, or sign in to iCloud, iCloud becomes the place your boat lives. If iCloud already has a boat, that boat is the one you’ll use on this device, and the boat that was here is saved first as a backup, without attachments: in the Files app under On My iPhone ▸ Ballast (or On My iPad), or in your Downloads folder on a Mac. Ballast tells you its name when it does.
To use the boat that was here instead, choose Restore From Export and pick the backup. If iCloud didn’t have a boat yet, the one here becomes the boat on all your devices, and nothing is saved.
To stop a device syncing, turn off iCloud Sync: on iPhone or iPad in the Settings app under Apps ▸ Ballast, on a Mac in Ballast ▸ Settings…. It takes effect the next time Ballast starts.
Still stuck? Hail us.