Starlink for working while cruising

[zachduckworth]

Hi everyone,

I have a job as an attorney in California. I was hoping to hear from some other lawyers or similar professionals who have tried working from their boats using Starlink. I’m looking at doing some extended cruising a few years in the future and I’m trying to see what sort of income I could generate while anchored. This would affect the way I provision my boat perhaps (number of solar panels, electronic gear, etc).

[mvweebles]

Options will undoubtedly be much different in a few years. If your question were for near future, my suggestion would be to go with the High Performance antenna ($2500 USD) and plan on liberal use of Mobile Priority data plan when more than a few miles from the coast ($2/GB).

There are occasional hiccups in coverage. But they are fairly rare. More reliable than cell. Also, I've had issues with Starlink playing nice with a VPN which your type of work may require (I use NordVPN).

[sailorboy1]

All I can say is earlier this year in the Bahamas I bet 30-50% of cruising boats had SL on them. And the number of people working from the boat greatly increased and and age of the people decreased because of that. And that was before SL was even available in the Bahamas.

My old RV Mobil that is now Regional Roam SL was acturally faster in the Bahamas that in is sitting here in Jacksonville FL.

I would bet unless you want to do virtual trials that the Roam plan would work fine.

[shimari]

I'm not sure you would need the HP antenna. If you're going to be anchored within cellular coverage, I'd recommend square dishy combined with a cellular modem. If you won't have cellular coverage at anchor, then definitely go with the HP. You'll have less drop outs, but it does use 2X the power of square dishy.

I use the square dishy and a 5G peplink router. When I have a call/video conference that is important, I use peplink's speedfusion to bond the two connections. This gives a seamless failover if Starlink has a short outage. You can get my setup for under $2k for equipment and under $200/mo. So far it is bullet proof (presuming cellular coverage).

[mvweebles]

Reason for suggestion of high-performance antenna is I have had occasional issues in remote locations of when the boat is swinging a bit. Nothing to bother me, but I spent over 10 years as a remote consultant, often in long contract negotiation sessions. The extra $2k the antenna costs is peanuts for the added benefit of uptime.

Some work is a problem if the call drops. Guessing an attorney that bills hourly is that type of work.

But hey, OP is a few years away from pulling the trigger on cruising. Landscape will be much different by the time he's ready.

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by mvweebles

Some work is a problem if the call drops. Guessing an attorney that bills hourly is that type of work.

sounds like extra billable $$$$$$ time

[shimari]

Totally agree a HP dish will have fewer dropouts than square dishy. I know that a bonded solution with square dishy and cellular has few if any drops when there is a decent cellular signal.

My slip neighbor has the HP. I'll ask him for what his outages look like in the spring (he's hauled out this winter).

[Jim Woodall]

I retired after more than 35 years of practice. More than 1/2 that time as an elected prosecutor trying hundreds of cases. I’ve been retired for only one year but that entire time has been spent living abroad and sailing from the Chesapeake to Grenada, going through the Bahamas, T&C, DR, USVI, Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and now Grenada. I’ve been doing consulting and cold case reviews for a number of law enforcement agencies. I probably have a Zoom or WebEx meeting 2 or 3 times per month. I regularly download case files that are several hundred pages long.

I have had the RV version since mid-2022. I have the original dishy, not the newer square dish (which is better by all accounts). My dishy is located on a custom mount beside an aft solar arch, about 18 feet above the water. I have no special equipment or modifications, just the standard SL package. I have the mobile priority package. It has worked great. I have excellent speeds at anchor, almost no outages except in heavy rain. Underway, one must use priority and it seems to be seamless. At anchor non-priority has been no problem at all. There are a few places, like the British Virgin Islands, where I have been told there are problems. I would estimate close to 30% - 40% of the boats throughout the Caribbean have Starlink now. At least, that is what I see in the places we have been. As I sit in my cockpit in Woburn Bay on the southern coast of Grenada, I count Starlink dishes on virtually every 3rd boat in the bay and earlier in the season there was a higher percentage. Everyone I have talked to is very happy with their set up. My set up is as basic as it gets, it works great for me. I try to work somewhere around 20 hours per week, which keeps our cruising kitty full. We are cruising in good comfort without even touching our pensions.

My wife also does consulting, about 15 hours per week.

[SV Confianza]

We have 2-4 people working from the boat full time. Starlink is now part of our setup. But, if you require regular video calls, you probably need to augment the starlink at this point. 1. There are regular drops. and 2. We have had crappy speeds in higher density areas.

We use a Peplink Router to augment the Starlink with a cell service, and their speedfusion VPN to bond them together. I just wrote up a new post on our whole setup if interested: https://www.clevermariner.com/post/o...nk-integration

[shimari]

SV Confianza - nice write-up. I agree with you about the Starlink drops and the use of Speedfusion.

Your setup is identical to mine except I am powering dishy via DC and the antennas. I have a Peplink 42G. The biggest issue is getting the router close enough to the antenna to prevent cable loss. I'd love to have a Dome to eliminate that problem, but the price of those is just too much.

[dannc]

We work from home most days and use Starlink. This morning, three systems are using Internet, there has been one conference call and a 1.75 GB file downloaded, the "usual" Internet usages, and also remote access into other systems. It works.

The wife and I have been on Web conferences at the same time. Not to each other. It works.

We also use at least two VPNs without a problem. One is for work and on work systems and the other is NordVPN on our systems/tablets/phones.

Funny thing I did recently was to update my phone. That was not the funny part but I noticed it seemed to be going slow. After the update, I noticed my VPN was still connected to a Netherlands server from when we had visited last spring. Had not noticed in all of that time. To be fair, my phone use is mostly phone calls and texting, not Internet usage, but still, my limited Internet usages was going to/from NL over Starlink.

Reading the Starlink conversations on CF and Trawler Forums, the Starlink issues seem to be based on location, the number of users in that location, and obstructions as the boat moves.

Later,
Dan

[SV Confianza]

Originally Posted by shimari

SV Confianza - nice write-up. I agree with you about the Starlink drops and the use of Speedfusion.

Your setup is identical to mine except I am powering dishy via DC and the antennas. I have a Peplink 42G. The biggest issue is getting the router close enough to the antenna to prevent cable loss. I'd love to have a Dome to eliminate that problem, but the price of those is just too much.

Same! I don’t know why they have the dome price so high compared to their other solutions…

I actually put the router all the way in an aft locker so that it can be close to the antennas, but I still worry about the losses.

[HuffinPuff]

I have a Mobile starlink solution. Because of its low latency, it allows for fluid video conferencing. I run a company and uptime and latency is extremely impotant to me. I don't drop customer calls and have great down load speeds. Just know upload speeds can be limited to around 10mps. So you can really only have one video conference at a time at those speeds. Happy to answer any questions.

[sailcrazy]

following. So far we're just using a MiFi....but that requiresT-Mobile cell tower coverage, or a new SIM card every time we change countries. Looking for some reasonable solution.....that I can understand..

[RedneckRedcoat]

Used the regular Gen 2 Router and Dish all through the abacos last year with no issues. We was on the Mobile Roam Plan with the option 2gb opt in option. We only needed to opt in when we was more than 10 miles offshore. This year I got to add a Peplink Router with the Sync Fusion VPN to make sure I have a US IPAddress because of the contract I’m working under.

We have only had issue when in fort pierce and when there was major storms in the area. It caused a lot of drop outs.

Speaking with peplink I’m looking at the Balance 20 router basically for the price point

Other than all that SL is a no brainer if you want to work remotely