Starlink Enterprise.

For my Atlantic crossings in 2015 and 2016, as recommended, I installed the pricey Iridium Satellite communication system, together with special equipment to compress Emails to try to limit the colossal expense of communicating using Iridium. This was all justified, at the time, so I could keep on top of weather forecasts on passage by importing ‘Grib files’ and also for publishing accounts of the ocean adventures on my web site in regular blogs. Unfortunately, user error inflicted a whopping £6K bill resulting from my ineptitude on one calamitous afternoon: I had removed the firewall to send a picture (of an exceptionally large omelette made by my son, Ollie…) attaching the picture to a blog, but I forgot to put the firewall back on – a huge error and a very expensive omelette! The connected equipment on board had a ‘field day’ updating, downloading and doing whatever it wanted with gay abandon (can we still say that?). So, thoroughly disillusioned with everything Iridium, the whole expensive installation has barely been used since.

This year when we were out of mobile phone coverage on our adventures over the top of Scotland, and with intermittent connection, we craved weather forecast updates. The weather was capricious and persistently awful, for nearly all of the summer. I had various conversations with other cruising yachts from the USA and Scandinavia and they all sang the praises of the Starlink system that they had installed. A Norwegian skipper enthused about how he had watched Netflix in the middle of the Indian Ocean! From their accounts, Starlink seemed worthy of further investigation… I am certainly not a fan of Mr. Musk but he seems to have ‘cracked it’ with this system and, in collaboration with Phil, aka ‘Gandalf’, the company ‘tekky’, it became clear that it was a ‘no brainer’. We opted for the Starlink Mini which is self-contained and only needs a power supply, all communication with it being by wifi.

The whole system cost less than £500 although, to run it from the 12v onboard system, a supplementary transformer was also required.

I now have download speeds of over 100megabits which is twice as fast as my broadband at home. The subscription is £50 a month for 50GB when using it, but the contract can be paused whenever it is not being used – and I still have my mobile data sim connection… I believe that Starlink does require an enhanced subscription when over 12 miles offshore which I understand can also be paused at will.

So, on the face of it, my communication dilemma seems to have been sorted. No doubt time will tell when I embark on another offshore adventure. Be prepared to be plagued with numerous blog notifications!