Thank you! It’s always good to be seen (except during a Breaking and Entering event of course). 😳😀 Thanks Chris for all of the great comments!

Thanks and thanks! 😁

You are very welcome!

Thanks Gregg. You’re the only one who commented on Adrienne’s awesome editing ideas. Sometimes I allow her to be funny too. 😛

@@SailingWindTherapy I noticed, too, and I love those brief moments. Well done.

Thanks @@PeterLawton! And you read the comments too! That’s impressive. 😊

The RV version is perfect for the boat which is what are using. Of course things could change but for now it’s exactly what we need.

Thanks! The RV version is perfect for the boat which is what are using. Of course things could change but for now it’s exactly what we need.

Thanks, I usually shoot for “not irritating”. 😁 That’s actually how I got Adrienne to marry me, because I wasn’t too irritating.

You’re very welcome!

You’re very welcome!

Thanks Brown! Hope you guys are doing great.

Thank you! We may be passing through Zurich in September for a Viking river cruise. You have such a beautiful country.

@@SailingWindTherapy I will be more than happy to show around Switzerland , please let me know, i mean it . cheers u 2

You are very welcome!

You’re very welcome. Elon just raised the monthly fee from $135 to $150 per month 😞. Maybe I shouldn’t have told anyone about this? 😊

@@SailingWindTherapy I live on my sailboat at the marina and enjoy my Starlink. I haven't tried it out in open water. And yes, my rates just increased also.

You’re very welcome! Glad it was helpful.

Thanks very much!

You’re very welcome! Thanks for watching once again!

For the AIS crowd….an AIS box w/Wi-Fi (I use AMEC CyphoS with built in VHF antenna splitter) allows all AIS data displays on your mobile devices. The Starlink product looks great, thanks for a great video.

You’re very welcome! Thanks for the additional info

You’re very welcome! There have been a few changes to the service since then but it’s all good if not better and I feel even more confident in the system.

Our pleasure. Hope you got something from it. 😊

Thanks for the comment! And yes we agree that there are certain advantages for Iridium GO but… they don’t really pertain to our needs at the moment😊. And with the new Starlink plans, Starlink is even more functional and dependable now. Thanks again

Thanks!

Cool!

👍

Thanks! Hope to see you guys soon!

Hi Peter, thanks for the comment. I’m 99% sure that the predict wind app for axiom provides all of the important weather info you need but will not replace the DataHub serviced like pinging your position. It’s really just like installing predict wind on your iPad or phone or computer. Axiom is just another place you can use predict wind. Hope that helps! And yes, I’m sure Starlink works much better on a cat, at least it probably searches less for satellites due to the motion which would use a lot less battery power.

@@SailingWindTherapy Thanks. That's clear. Of course a location ping is something you'd like to have 24/7. Even with the plotter switched off. Here in Europe there is a snag with the Starlink RV version. It only allows you to be outside of your country for 2 months. After that you need to reregister it to a new country. When cruising for half a year that may become an issue. We'll have to see about that. Perhaps it is just a formality. I assume the maritime version doesn't have that restriction, but that one is simply too expensive for poor sailers 🙂 Cheers, Peter.

@@peterdevos811 I’d bet the reregister part is just a formality and won’t be enforced or at the very least it’s just a matter of a little paperwork. But we shall see. And in the meantime, using Starlink is a fantastic option.

You are very welcome!

Errrrrr….. thanks?

It performed remarkably. Every once in a while during huge seas it would cut out for a few seconds but that was not that often. We were very surprised how well it worked under those crazy conditions!

We have the regular dish that I think people call Dishy. The rv version is the same dish as the home ones but gives you more portability for coverage. It’s $135/ month. The power consumption may be the biggest drawback. I think we’re averaging around 40-50 watts which adds up over the course of a day. We’re fortunate to have a good battery bank but it still puts a dent in it.

@@SailingWindTherapy turn off heater)) and SL app now have a night sleep timer to save power

Officially the docs say that it’s not to be used while in motion. We just sailed 1500 miles and during it I finished two seasons of a TV show, FaceTimed our kids every day, and downloaded weather reports every few hours. So… yes! 😃

Hi, thanks for the questions. We have the Raymarine ais700 transponder. This does not have a WiFi interface which is why we were only able to see it on the chartplotter. If you had an ais transponder with WiFi then you’d be able to also use it on your phone or iPad (via Navionics or Aquamaps). So YES to your question. 😊 Also if you are planning on doing larger, longer offshore sails then I would still consider Iridium GO as an emergency back up if you wanted to get frequent weather updates. But it’s a very expensive backup. For just emergency issues I would just get the Garmin InReach. Hope this helps!

Thank you!

Starlink sells a pipe adapter kit for around $40. It was easy. For the first few weeks since we weren’t sailing in big seas we simply had it resting in the fishing rod holder. A bit scary but it’s pretty heavy so we weren’t too concerned that it would fall out. 😎

Us too!

Great question! We keep our Garmin InReach activated and it’s always fully charged in the ditch bag when we go offshore. We also have an EPIRB for the boat and personal EPIRBS on our life jackets. We also have a sail plan filed and people tracking our position in case we have an issue. However if we do a transatlantic or pacific trip we will definitely turn our Iridium Go back on for emergencies and for when we assume we will eventually lose Starlink coverage. Hope that answers your question.

Thank you. Good to know!

Thanks very much!

Was not aware of that but… when we used the Iridium voice (which is cool that it’s over satellite but really has terrible reception with a lot of lag time which makes it very difficult to communicate) we aren’t really talking about bank numbers or anything where we care if anyone is listening in. But we do see your point. Thanks!

@Sailing Wind Therapy it's NOT easy to do in any way, but both iridium and inmarsat voice can bot be listened to look up tech minds he's got a good video on it. But can only hear the down link of the satellite. Inmarsat ecg and LES msg can both be picked up has well fairly easy.

We totally agree!

I think for more than a few users and being out at sea a lot maybe is the case for the maritime service. But even still that should work if crew is sharing some of the costs. The service by the way was great even during high seas and lots of rolling.

There is more than enough space on LEO, much more satellites are coming.

It's not the number of satellites that is the issue, they need to get the laser links working on them, so data can move around the planet further from ground stations.

@@edc1569 that gen 2 sat start all gen now per launch

I don’t think Iridium Go is unreliable, it’s just very, very slow and the phone part is not at all conducive to having any real conversation. If you are using it with Predict Wind it allows you to slowly download grib files so eventually you’ll get a decent weather report when offshore. I think until Starlink came into play it was necessary. But with Starlink, it’s completely unnecessary. I’ve been paying the lowest subscription rate for InReach for years but am ok with that since it’s my backup and we always throw that in our ditch bag when sailing offshore. So the cruiser was right “Before” Starlink became available. Hope this helps!

That is exactly the same question I want to make! I have an 43 Catch

Yes it will work on a monohull as well. Check out the Facebook page Starlink for Boats and you’ll get all sorts of good info for your situation. We have friends with Starlink on their monohull and it’s working just fine though. Our dish periodically resets itself but not that often. It does take quite a bit of power though. Like 30 watts. It’s a 110 AC plug but people have converted the plug to 12v which should save a few watts of inverter loss.

@@SailingWindTherapy thank you for detailed & fast answer. I apreciate your support

We think it may be a bit of a gamble but for a yacht owner to bet $500 on a technology that would be a game changer to us is a no brainer. Have a great sail by the way! That’s a lot of miles!

@@SailingWindTherapy I think your point is that it's really not much of a gamble (especially on a half million dollar yacht). I was just thinking that instead of hauling my Starlink to Vietnam, I'd offer to front the cost for the boat owner hoping that he pay me back once he fully utilizes it. (I'm on my boat right now on the internet and watching Prime Video HD with mine.) Be nice to have internet instead of 30 minute downloads of raw weather data.

Sorry, I do not know anyone who set the in motion dish up yet. It should be pretty cool though

The benefit to the Datahub is that if you plug it into the NMEA backbone you get a lot of extra data.

Actually, yes it does and I should have mentioned that. I think the PredictWind subscription we have is a necessity. It’s the best weather app which keeps us safe and provides proper weather routing and passage planning.There are four different subscription levels but I think the tracker comes with the standard subscription which I believe is $250/year. Datahub I believe is calculating our polars now but I haven’t looked to see if it’s working yet and I’m also unsure what it does if we’re motoring. I have to call them and ask how that will work. Hope this helps.

So I think you should be totally fine for the ARC and here’s why. You will have connectivity while out at sea. And it’s fast and reliable. But you do have to pay a small amount per Gig for data. The thing is you’re not going to be streaming movies, you’re going to use it for grib files and Check ins which should not be overly data intensive. But you will have it available in case of emergency or if you need to FaceTime call your family. And the cost is extremely reasonable. Keep in mind while also while sailing closer to shore you go back to the regular plan so then you can start getting fast, unlimited data again for $150/month. I think this service is incredible

Thanks for the comment. For the Predict Wind app which is by far our favorite weather app there are a few different subscription options. If you use the free one then I don’t think it will be able to utilize the Datahub. The other subscription options are Standard which is around $250/ year and the Professional which is around $400/year. With those you get all of the Datahub features. We splurged and got the professional version when there was a sale on it. It gives us ocean current data which is critical especially when crossing the Gulf Stream and better weather routing and passage planning. But to answer your question, yes if you have a paid subscription, you get to use Datahub for just the cost of the hardware gadget. Hope this answers your question.

Unfortunately we haven’t done any European research yet. But there is a Facebook group called Starlink on Boats that will probably help you with the question. Good luck!

We are a catamaran so our boat role is not as significant as a monohull. However even monohulls are getting great service. And yes it works while navigating

The satellite that your boat is communicating with is moving at thousands of miles an hour. Your boat’s movement, even if it’s moving at 20 knots, is trivial to the process of tracking the signals. The other good news is that it’s not using a physical dish to send signals. It’s using a phased array that’s electronically moved. It can do this very fast. It’s how the tracking radar on large military ships works. It’s rocket science at work.

@@Bill_N_ATX Ok, your answer begs for a few physics explanations. Even if Starlink satellites are not geostationary, their angular speed w.r.t. an observer on Earth is less than 1 degree per second (regardless of their actual speed in space). This allows establishing communications between the observer and the satelite. At the same time, roll can be much higher (tens of degrees). Imagine staying flat on your back on the deck of your monohull and looking straight ahead. Due to roll, the position of one satelite is constantly move with variable speed and direction. Whereas, if you do this on land, a satelite will move steadily and slowly across your field of view. Maintaining a link in a small boat on sea is therefore much more difficult than on land. Kudos to Elon and to his engineers.

@@dopo8333 I spent a moment googling how fast a boat can roll from side to side. I didn’t know it, but how fast it rolls is a function of beam, not the size of the roll. I started down the path of the equations and decided it wasn’t a matter that I had time to work on right now. What I did figure out was that a roll that was faster than what the phased array could respond to would probably keep you from watching the screen to begin with. The downlink is not the issue. The satellite is sending its signal to a large area than even a speeding airplane is not going to outrun. The uplink is the one in question. How large a cone of RF is the uplink sending? Short answer is I have no idea. Phased arrays can be pretty tight but I don’t know how tight these will be. And of course, environmental conditions would also be a factor. If it was a squall line that was causing the roll, you wouldn’t be able to send and receive through the water in the air anyway. But to your point, indeed it would be a good physics paper to see what performance envelope the signal will work in. But unless you knew great details about the array properties, the signal power, any array gain, the required signal strength required at the satellite, and a few other values that SpaceX is never going to tell you, it’s a mute point. It will work till it won’t.

@@Bill_N_ATX Ok, so if you're scientifically literate, why did you write that scientifically illiterate comment? Just to vent some inner anger?

Thanks for the comment. Not sure what you mean by a $50 SL internet adapter though. We’ve been keeping our SL on the standard mobile plan which has been working great in the Caribbean. We will also keep it running while we are offshore with the per GB plan so we’re not too worried about the small amount of data that it sends out for tracking. Now for tracking we have a link on our website that shows where we are, where we’ve been, how fast we were going at every moment, and how strong the winds were at each moment. We like that record. Our use case scenario works for us. It might not work for everyone though. We haven’t heard of Zoleo though so just looking at it now. Besides the $200 you also have to pay a monthly fee between $26 and $56 per month. With PW we are not paying anything extra per month. So $300 with no monthly fees is certainly better than $200 with $26/month

We had 8 footers on our passage between Hampton, VIrginia and BVI, 1500 nautical miles, and besides a few very temporary outages we had service the whole time. I believe the maritime service is fir mega yachts crossing oceans and with a lot of people on board sharing the WiFi.

Thanks for the info. Luckily, the Caribbean is considered North America so we’re good for a few years. But others should consider your info.

We agree!

We are doing the same. Staying with our original Roam since when in the Caribbean we will mostly be in the island zones based on their map with just small gaps between islands. We are on the hard in Grenada at the moment. But at least our friends are not having any issues with original Roam too. Next season I’m not going to mess switching to priority data when sailing between islands though and we’ll take the chance that it still works in between (since those gaps are very small). But I will rethink it all next May when we sail up North to Bermuda and New England.

Hope you guys are doing great and loving the Caribbean. We had to leave earlier than originally planned since our daughter is about to have a baby (literally at any moment).

Congratulations! We also had to suddenly turn around and head back to the Chesapeake. Our beloved dog Fanny suddenly took ill. Unfortunately, we lost her😢, but managed to get her home where she was comfortable for a few days.

So sorry to hear 🥺. So are you up North for the summer? We’re flying to Annapolis for the boat show in Oct and then heading back to Grenada to work our way back up to New England for next summer

Thank you Jelle! We agree and had done that already.

We’re in the Caribbean at yet moment. If you look at the map of the Caribbean you’ll see that the coverage areas extend pass the islands so their might be some gaps between the islands but I doubt it’s s that accurate. Elon wants people using his satellites.

No we haven’t had any experience with them or really know much about it. Sorry

Thank you very much Jose for the concern. When we were installing our new sails I got my finger pinched between a baton and the mast. I watched it closely as the underlying bruise worked its way up over the months. It was fun when it finally got to the top. All better now. I can finally start applying for the hand model job I’ve always wanted

For now I believe we are fine with the same plan we had since we will be on the hard for the summer. But even after we leave Grenada after hurricane season we should still be good. We’ll find out on May 9

I haven’t seen their video so I’m not really sure why. Could be dish positioning, a lot of external blocking, or just a bad coverage area maybe? I’ll try and watch their vid soon. Thanks for the comment!

I think part of their issue is competition for bandwidth - they are in the Pacific Northwest where the usage population is much higher at certain times of day

@@SailingWindTherapy kzfaq.info?search_query=MV+freedom+starlink+installation link to their installation videos.

@@SailingWindTherapy They went with a fixed mount, disabling the tracking built into the dish. That's probably a large part of their issue since their dish is essentially pointed straight up.

Yes I believe the Iridium satellites were launched a while ago. But we wanted to show that there are now better options. I was actually shocked last month when we got an email from Iridium saying that they were raising their monthly rates. I was thinking that they should be slashing their prices if they want to remain competitive in the marine satellite market.

I believe Starlink intends to be completely global but they don’t have all of the satellites 🛰 up yet. But they are going up fast! I’m trying to remember back to my science classes in school but I don’t think the service will be faster at the equator. The satellites should all be at the same altitude.

one told me the starlink sats chain up around the äquator, so my guess was that it could behave like the cell network and rate the speed down by greater distances, but never mind. in comparison to the Iridium network even 10 mbps would be lightning fast

Well… they have a map on their web site but apparently it’s a bit more then they claim 😮

Thanks for the comment and the additional info. I’m thinking Elon is not going to disable any coverage. I believe he wants total coverage for as many people as possible. And I don’t mind having the router since we need one anyway. But maybe I’m missing something?

@@SailingWindTherapy our existing router has ethernet ports which Starlink is missing. When you have to transfer those movie files to the NAS drive wifi is too sloooow. Pretty good summary though and I hope you are correct, the iridium is so frustratingly slow and expensive, hopefully Starlink will give us what we need

@@SailingNoRegrets SL have an ethernet port as option

@@tvguide4khv Yes I've seen that and was considering it, but I'd still need a Ethernet switch (or use old router) as it only has the single Ethernet port. I have a couple of laptops and NAS drive so it is kinda strange that none were included in the Starlink router. I will go the PoE modification and half it's power use, beneficial on a yacht

We shall see. Elon doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who likes to restrict things or follow other people’s rules. I think he wants everyone to have internet access especially where there is spotty cellular networks. I also don’t think he cares about nickel and diming customers but that of course is just my opinion. Technology changes all of the time and if we have to throw this dish out to get something in the future than so be it. In the meantime for a year or two or three we are loving this product.

Oh also… if I were crossing an ocean I would most certainly not depend on my current Starlink service. We were amazed that we had it the entire 1500 mile sail to BVI.

@@SailingWindTherapy I don't have those problems. I never move my boat. 🤦🏻‍♂️😂

6

We determined that as long as we weren't doing crossing, then Starlink would be a more versatile solution. We have had times it dropped out, usually 20-50 nm out on the Pacific side of Baja in rougher weather.

Yes! It’s awesome!

Most ocean going mega yachts would probably be happy to pay that when crossing an ocean. We’ll stick to the RV version for our island hopping 😊

Good to know. Thanks!

Thanks for the the info!

We had service for 1500 miles from Hampton, Va. to British Virgin Islands.

​@@SailingWindTherapy You probably had service the whole way because you were within 500 miles of ground stations the whole way. I think you are covered in the Caribbean and around Panama but I don't think you will get signal in the open ocean more than 500 miles from land.

Yep.

$599. for the dish

@SailingWindTherapy can you make voice calls with this system? I need to pass a commercial saftey inspection and trying to pick the best option. I know the iridium go I can call out

Yes As long as your phone can make WiFi calls. Plus we use WhatsApp and FaceTime. Anything you can do using wifi

@SailingWindTherapy thank you for the info. So for starlink it's 599 plus monthly charge and that's it?

Yep that’s all for fast unlimited access. Its amazing!

We were surprised too. And we hear it’s working great in the Bahamas. The only thing I would caution is if you are using it for work and doing a lot of zoom calls. With some apps there is no buffering so if you lose service for a couple of seconds, then the call drops.

@@SailingWindTherapy Thanks! will be getting one soon

Yes! Plus we also have VictronConnect , so we can monitor our power (batteries, shore power, and solar). In fact that’s what we just did. We left the boat in the Bvi to go visit the family for a couple of weeks.

Until then or if it ever happens, we will continue to enjoy amazing WiFi.

We had just gotten new iPhones and it downloaded all of my emails and marked them as unread. 😇 And the drunk tracking lines just means we are sailing and following the wind 😊

It might. But currently Iridium GO has the monopoly and they just raised their rates by around 20%.

That’s what it does. One of the settings is how often you want it to ping your location. It uses the WiFi created from Starlink. For our position, it can use its own internal Gps but since it’s plugged into our nmea backbone, it uses the gps data from the boat. Hope that answers your question.

So far so good and we haven’t heard of anyone’s dish falling

Agreed!

Not sure what you are implying. We have no arrangement or communications with Starlink other than the $150 that we send to them every month. Maybe you’re thinking of the video we did to show how we installed it.

Hell yea! Do I have to go to Palm Coast though? That’ll be a deal breaker for me 😀

Oh yea, she totally looks sexy! Nice knitting work!

I feel extremely confident that Starlink is completely reliable at this point with our experience so far. Also I checked into Iridium stock and it appears the vast majority of their business is with the governments so it’s not likely they will have any impact on lost marine revenue😊 I was fully prepared to short their stock

We always have our Garmin InReach charged and ready to go in our ditch bag. Plus an EPIRB for the boat and personal EPIRBS on our life jackets.

@@SailingWindTherapy nice ! Safe travels