Interenet for the Boat: Why I chose Starlink

[Hydraulicjump]

There is a wonderful string on all the reasons NOT to choose Starlink for internet on the boat.

viewtopic.php?f=24&t=20565&hilit=starlink&sid=377fb0516448f6d4a801f46f4c8803e9#p134025

I have read them carefully multiple times (all 32 posts) and learned a ton. And for many in the Tugnuts ecosystem this is a guide--no, a recipe-- on to how to have great internet speeds. Seriously. Get the Pepwave and hook up all the rest of the stuff and you will get blazing internet speeds as long as there is a cell signal to catch.

But...

This evening we got to the boat in Elliott Bay Marina, brought the Starlink RV box down, unpacked it, put the antenna on the table on the command bridge, plugged everything in and voila, in less than 15 minutes we had 10x the upload and download speed we had using our AT&T cell hotspots with a Weeboost antenna (which is not saying much since we are in a cell coverage black hole).

I am posting this because it illustrates a useful dichotomy. There are those of us who are sommeliers of boat electronics. Their solutions are elegant, efficient, and very clever. A skill to be admired and appreciated. And especially to be learned from and copied where possible.

Then there are the Two-buck Chucks like me. Despite my fancy education, my eyes glaze over when discussions get into whether to use a BR1 Pro 5G with a Mobility 42G antenna with frequency gains I can never memorize along with the failover and WAN license and.....

you get the picture. As much as I dislike the antics of Elon Musk--wealthy narcissist and maybe an evil genius because of his use of lasers--his minions have produced something stupid simple for knucklewalkers like me. Yes, the mbps, latency and outages do not match the screaming internet numbers of the cool-kid upgrades, but I plug it in, open my iPhone app, and get the internet speeds I need to do business and entertainment without the upfront transaction costs. I just can't boast about the numbers, even if they are adequate for my needs.

Now, it is important to remind all of you older folks out there how seemingly happy you were with dial-up internet and the crazy 20MB of storage the first apple hard drive gave you ("why would I ever need more than this"?). But, it is a fool's errand to try to anticipate the technology of the future. Maximize what you have.

Jeff on La Barka (for a couple more weeks...then on to the new boat)

 

[Nwdiver]

Yep, the installation instructions are pictorial, if I remember, only three pictures, unpack, point north, plug in.

 

[DMD3]

Eventually Starlink should become more analogous to cellular LTE/5G over the air. The below link is not regarding RV or Marine service already available but rather refers to handheld portable devices connecting directly to its satellite network utilizing 2GHz band. New FCC filing…

https://www.pcmag.com/news/spacex-preps ... bile-users

Closer to SkyNet each day. [emoji44]

 

[Nwdiver]

Still a bit in the future. No real details on when or performance yet, but not having to need to be near a cellular tower to make a call would be a benefit to a lot of people.

 

[sgeary]

We are just returning from the Broughton's.
There is almost no cellular or wifi in all the good spots, unless you are near Vancouver Island.

As a result, my Pepwave reouter and 42G antenna were essentially useless up here.

However, I did notice the Starlink antenna on a significant number of boats visiting up here in Canada. And the reports I received from Starlink owners was very positive.

Puget Sound and the San Juans might be good for wifi and cell phone routers, but if you go into most of Desolation Sound and the Broughtons, it appears that Starlink is the way to go.

I will have Starlink on the boat next season.

 

[Nwdiver]

Depending on how far north you go, starlink might not be available, yet. Most of Canada and Alaska are marked “coming soon”. Eventually, world wide coverage will be available. Spacex is launching around 2 rockets a month wit 56ish satellites per rocket. For full coverage I think they need 20k satellites, I think they are closing on 3K at the moment. Still a long way to go.

https://www.starlink.com/map

 

[Hydraulicjump]

If you visit the Trawler Forum website and follow the Starlink discussion you will see that folks are getting good reception way north of Ketchican. Heck, people are even getting intermittent high speed connections in fjords like Princess Louisa.

Here is the Trawler Forum discussion:

https://www.trawlerforum.com/forums/s4/ ... 61866.html

Caution, it is up to 380 posts and still going strong. Takes a bit of work get to the nuggets and it was initiated last January. A lot has changed. Might be best to start from the last and go in reverse. It is very chatty. But for the internet sommeliers among us I highly recommend the multiple posts from MV Renaissance where they are a couple working all day long on the internet and have done some major fiddling with performance of the system and electronics, including DC power and using two dishes to reduce drops.

https://svrenaissance.com/musings-about-starlink/

Still, back to my original post. We went out for a cocktail cruise with friends last evening. It took me less than five minutes to retrieve the dishy from the table on the command bridge and tuck everything into a plastic bin. Then when we got home it took less than five minutes to set everything up, and a few minutes for the unit to lock onto a satellite.

But here is my caution. We are in a marina within sight of the Space Needle in Seattle. There is no way we could get a residential Starlink with portability connection (probably years out at this point), so we had to go with a RV Starlink set up (same price basically). This set up puts us second in line on the satellite. This has limited impact on download speeds (100 mbps this morning), but the upload speeds are suspect (less than 5 mbps, occasionally dropping to 2), which will make zooms challenging. So in a crowded place like Seattle, with an RV Starlink, expect slow uploads.

Finally, with the purchase of our new-to-us boat we are planning to cruise to southeast Alaska multiple times. We will have high speed internet the whole way, except where obstructions block the dish. At $135/month, being able to download Windy and other weather data makes that worth it. That and being able to facetime my granddaughter, of course. Work will take care of itself. And if we are going to be off the boat for more than a month, we can turn off the Starlink and save the cost.

Check it out.

Jeff

 

[dbsea]

I've been out cruising in the Gulf Islands for the last two weeks (still out but making my way back south and at Henry Island now), and still being young, I have to work while cruising. I have the peplink system (BR1 Pro 5G router, 42g antenna, and both t-mobile & at&t sim cards). I can tell you that I have had a very frustrating time with connectivity while up in the gulf islands, and I can bet desolation is even worse. I had to move around a lot to maintain connectivity, and often times didn't have it at all even with two different carriers roaming partners to choose from. That part of this trip has been utterly exhausting. I am also ordering a taller mast for my peplink antenna (3ft total) to see if that improves my reception.

I will be getting Starlink as my 3rd option for the next cruising season, hoping that they come out with one that uses less watts between now and then. My C30-CB doesn't have a generator, so every ah or wh matters. I am also upgrading my solar panel to the custom marine products 200-watt panel which uses the same footprint as my current 160w Kyocera panel.

 

[NSM]

I’ve got Starlink that I’m using for traveling in the van and boat. It’s pretty awesome but it does draw on the batteries. We left it on overnight to test the draw and it used 60 amp-hrs in ten hours. I budget my use accordingly, especially in the van where my battery bank isn’t as robust.

 

[Hydraulicjump]

This is the second problem. Low upload speeds in urban areas and it can, by our Ranger Tug standards, be a power hog. We are using it on an as-needed basis, dropping back to cell on the hook when speeds are good enough, setting it up only when we need it and turning it off at night when we go to bed and the solar array goes to sleep.

Our next boat has a generator, which is a moral dilemma. We are usually the pious Ranger Tug owners—bordering on sanctimonious—in an anchorage with our big house battery bank and solar panel array who frown at the noisemakers when they come on at sunset. But with the new boat, we ARE the noisemakers (possibly), especially if we are drawing a lot of juice for the Starlink unit. Although 60 ah overnight is not all that much as long as everything is managed well. After all, when our batteries are healthy we have 440/2 = 220 ah available for use when fully charged. But batteries are only healthy for a short period of time.

This is all a reminder that a boat is a series of trade-offs to be managed for optimal results, imperfect as they may be.

Jeff

 

[mlanger]

Here's an interesting video about this on YouTube: https://youtu.be/RQ7HS7txPw0

MV Freedom is a channel run by a couple who live full time on a Nordhaven. In a pair of videos, they basically butcher a Starlink to install it permanently on the boat's roof. Apparently, it works pretty well for them.

Personally, I like the idea just putting it out there on the command bridge and letting it do its thing. Some friends of mine are having a lot of success with it on a travel trailer, so it seems to me like it might be a good solution.

 

[Nwdiver]

I’m going for minimum modifications, am going to put it on a quick disconnect on the mast above the radar. A bit concerned about wind load on the mast. Not too worried about the antenna itself as it’s rated for hurricane winds. I will put in a dedicated cable and maybe a small 150W inverter. Going to be interesting to see how it all works. For me, having Internet on the boat is a nice thing to have, not a necessity, so I probably won’t have is on more then a few hours a day, thus minimizing the power draw.

Cutwater, if you are reading this, where is my boat (hull 9)

 

[dbsea]

I ordered Starlink and it will be here saturday. I've been reading about how you can modify it to run over POE with a dc-dc step up converter, and run it right off the 12v house system. My chief concern will be where to mount the dish on my C-30CB which already has a fair amount of tubing running at odd angles all over the flybridge. 🙂

https://www.offgridcto.com/2022/05/23/s ... r%20supply.

 

[Submariner]

I ordered Starlink and it will be here saturday. I've been reading about how you can modify it to run over POE with a dc-dc step up converter, and run it right off the 12v house system. My chief concern will be where to mount the dish on my C-30CB which already has a fair amount of tubing running at odd angles all over the flybridge. 🙂

Also note, the RV Starlink antenna has an IP54 rating, which is defined as "protected from water spray".
Starlink's high performance antenna has an IP56 rating, "protected from high pressure water jets".

The Garmin Radar, GPS antennas, XM Weather antenna area all IPx7 rated (water proof to 1 meter for 30 minutes).
The Mobility 42G antenna has an IP68 rating. "Protected from long term immersion up to a specified pressure."

 

[CruisingElvinRay]

Having been involved in IP (Ingress Protection) ratings in my day job, there is a huge difference in the robustness of an IPx4 rated device and an IPx6 rated device. It takes a lot of extra engineering to get from the 4 to the 6.


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[Hydraulicjump]

Following up on your understanding of these ratings, would you be willing to mount the RV antenna and leave it in the weather/salt spray or does this rating give you pause? On the new boat I have an ideal spot at the top of the mast more than 15’ off the water, but I worry it will just get wrecked up there is left out full time.

 

[Submariner]

Following up on your understanding of these ratings, would you be willing to mount the RV antenna and leave it in the weather/salt spray or does this rating give you pause? On the new boat I have an ideal spot at the top of the mast more than 15’ off the water, but I worry it will just get wrecked up there is left out full time.

Myself, I would bring out Starlink and set it up on the boat in the cockpit, use it. And when done, I would put it away.

I wouldn’t install an ip54 antenna on top of my boat. It’s also a bigger antenna, 19inches by 12 inches.


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[CruisingElvinRay]

If I were to install the RV version in a salt marine environment, I’d probably do it with the expectation of 2 or 3 good years of trouble-free use, happy with more, not surprised with less. Hopefully the RV version has coated boards and sealed connectors.

Keep in mind that the standard allows limited water ingress, which means that air will get in there, too. I’m sure you’ve already seen the impact of salt air on your yacht.

Also, keep in mind that, if it is at the top of your mast, you have to figure out a way to get your nav/anchor light above that.


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[Nwdiver]

I wonder what the return policy will be for a salt corroded antenna would be? I’ve heard they replaced a lightning damaged antenna without issue.

 

[Submariner]

I wonder what the return policy will be for a salt corroded antenna would be? I’ve heard they replaced a lightning damaged antenna without issue.

The odds of being struck by lightning I would imagine is a lot less than the odds of corrosion from salt a water on a boat.


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