I have gotten a LOT of requests from cruising sailors who are new to Starlink about the details of how to set it up, what plan to get, how to manage the system, and many other questions. A short article seems the best way to address those instead of answering them one at a time. This article will discuss the types of plans available, and which one might be best for you. There is one answer that will be the best for ALMOST all cruising sailors, but, once you understand the details about WHY, you can make your own choice. Hardware issues on which antenna to use, and how to configure it for your boat will follow.

This information is current as of November, 2023. It is most certainly NOT official Starlink policy, but is my understanding of the rules and how they impact us sailors. I am not an expert, but I have done a pretty deep dive into this. I am sure I got something at least partly wrong, but I am also sure that the internet being what it is, that will be pointed out to me! One more caveat, this is written from the perspective of someone with a home address in the continental USA. Prices ARE different in different parts of the world, and policies might be as well, so extrapolate with care.

With those caveats out of the way, let’s dive in. Don’t worry, the water is not too deep…

Before we can understand our choices we have to know what they are, and to understand that we need to have a peak behind the curtain at Starlink’s business.

Lost in Space

If there are any communication engineers out there, please forgive the gross simplification of this section. I think it has enough information to get the concepts clear, but no more…

The basic concept for satellite communications is pretty simple, you send information up into the sky, the satellite receives it and sends it back to a ground station connected to “The Internet.” Information coming back you makes a similar trip, from the ground station up to the satellite and then down to you.

This was the standard way most satellite systems worked because their satellites were high in the sky, and pretty much everywhere on earth they could “see” you AND a ground station. Only a few complex, high powered satellites are needed to cover the entire globe. The downside of this system is the time it takes for the signal to go up to the satellite and back down can be long–up to a quarter of a second. For internet data, and even for phone calls that is about three forevers.

Starlink’s big difference is the satellites are in very low orbits, about 340 miles, compared to over 26,000 miles for some other communication satellites. So the round trip signal delay is trivial. This comes with a couple of complications caused by the low orbit. Each satellite has a very limited view of the world, so you need a lot of them. Fortunately, because each satellite sees fewer customers at a time, they can be smaller and simpler. This limited window down to the earth’s surface causes another issue for customers in places where there is not a ground station within view of the satellite they are sending their data to. Without a ground station, you can not send and receive data.

Starlink solves this problem with laser communication between satellites. You send an email to your Mom while you are sailing in the middle of the ocean, and it goes up to a satellite, and bounces from one to another as laser light, until it gets to one that can see a ground station, and then over traditional methods to your Mom’s computer. Pretty slick. But there’s more…

This laser link is very fast. Actually faster (by a little tiny bit) than sending the same data through a cable. So someone sending stock trading information from London to Wall Street with a Starlink connection will have their data arrive a few milliseconds before his competition using the undersea cable connections. In the world of high speed trading, milliseconds are big bucks, so this data stream is VERY valuable property, and is therefore expensive. It is likely a very significant part of Starlink’s revenue.

That’s all nice, but how does it affect us poor cruising sailors??? Read on…

Kinds of Data

N.B.: For non-commercial customers Starlink offers three kinds of data at different priorities, and different prices. In the Starlink documentation and on their website they don’t always use the same terms for the same thing. I have tried to be internally consistant in this article, even if my terminology might occasionally disagree with exactly the way Starlink phrases things in some places. This is especially true with data plans.

If you have a residential account, your system is usable only at a single location. Your data is middle priority. We do not care about this type of data, because it is not useable on a boat that is moving around.

The other types of data are “Roaming” and “Priority“. Roaming data is not not connected to a single location, but it is the lowest priority on the system. Roaming data can not be used while “moving” or while not “on land.” Starlink defines “moving” as more than 10 miles per hour. The definition of “on land” is a bit more complex, but it appears to extend to about 15 to 20 miles off shore. We have reliably used Roaming data while sailing, docked, and anchored in coastal waters, including all of the Chesapeake Bay. We don’t normally exceed 10 miles per hour (~ 9 knots).

Priority data is (as you might guess) the highest priority on the system. Users with lower priority plans will have their data slowed down if it conflicts with yours. It is usable anywhere in the world, because it is the only data that is able to be sent by the laser satellite links, Starlink’s most valuable bandwidth. For all these reasons this data is the most expensive data on Starlink’s menu.

De Plan, Boss! De Plan!

When you go to the Starlink website and go to the page for “Personal” users, you will see three prominent choices: RESIDENTIAL, ROAM, and BOATS. Let’s ignore the RESIDENTIAL menu, because we want our Starlink to roam the world with us, not sty at home. So let us start with the various plans under the ROAM menu, and dissect who might be best served by each of them.

MOBILE REGIONAL: Currently $150/month. Unlimited Roaming data on land, NO access on the open ocean. Coverage is anywhere in your “home continent.” Starlink defines this a bit different than your old grammer school geography book. If you had your Starlink delivered to an address in the USA your “home continent” is North America, which includes all of Central America and the Caribbean. For many cruisers, this is the plan they should start with, and might be the only one they ever need.

Be aware of where you home continent is, and when you might be leaving it.If you are planning on leaving your home “continent”–say crossing the Atlantic–you should get a global plan BEFORE you leave.

MOBILE GLOBAL: Currently $200/month. This is identical in capabilities and restrictions to the Mobile Regional plan, but is available everywhere in the world that Starlink is allowed to operate. For most cruisers, this is the best plan once they travel outside of their home continent.

MOBILE PRIORITY: Currently $250/month. This is a plan that sounds great for a cruising sailor on first hearing, but there is a “gotcha” in it that you need to be sure you understand. It includes 50 GigaBytes of “Priority data” that can be used anywhere in the world, including offshore, and unlimited Roaming Data that can be used anywhere in the world on land. Sounds great, right? The catch is that the 50GB of Priority data is ALWAYS the first data you use, even if you are anchored in a place Starlink considers “on land.” If you chew through more than 50GB of data in a month, it might be the case that you have no more Priority data when it comes time to lift the anchor offshore. That extra $100 then has not actually bought you anything useful. If you use very little data when you are on land, and want Starlink just for offshore communications, this might make sense. But on our boat, if we are doing our normal things, we can consume 5GB in a day, so for much of each month we would NOT have Priority data available to us.

I hear the questions now… what about the BOAT Plans? Are they not the best? Well… if you have a super yacht with a super thick wallet, yes probably. Let’s take a quick look at these:

First is MOBILE PRIORITY, that is the same as describe above, and has the same issues. The other plans are the same, but offer higher amounts of Priority data, for a LOT of extra money. For example, the next one gets you 1 TeraByte of data in a month for $1,000. That’s a LOT of data, and a LOT of money. It might make sense for someone who needs a connection for video conferences and the like while offshore, if the job pays very well 🙂 Most cruising sailors don’t need this.

But I Want to Use it Offshore!!!???

So if you have the MOBILE REGIONAL or the MOBILE GLOBAL which come only with Roaming data how do you connect to the internet when you are offshore? Not to worry, there is an answer for that. You can temporarily turn on Priority Data that will allow you to use your system while out on the ocean, and while moving at speeds greater than 10 miles per hour. This is billed in addition to your normal monthly plan at $2/GB. This is turned through the Starlink website (NOT the app that controls the antenna!). It will be most seamless if you do this before you leave where Starlink considers “land”. It’s not obvious how to do so…

Log into your Starlink account on the starlink.com webpage. Go to “My Account” You will see a list of “Your Starlinks” Probably just one there… Click on the box that says “MANAGE” On the chart that shows your data usage, you will see a toggle for Mobile Priority. Turn it on before you just before you go offshore, and when you are back to “land” turn it off.

Starlink gives little or usually no documentation about how things work, so we are left to wonder, and wander around and find things for ourselves. Here are a couple of discoveries.

If you move from “land” to “the ocean” while still connected to your roaming data, the option to enable Mobile Priority data will appear on your connected app. If you need to re-engage with the satellites, it can take a LONG time to do so, like an hour or more. be patient, you will get seemingly random error messages while the Antenna tries to figure out where it is, and where a satellite is located that it can talk to.

Once you turn on Mobile Priority data the option to turn it off will disappear until you are back “on-land” again. This can cause confusion, but it makes a kind of sense. If you want to stop using Priority data, you simply have to turn the system off.

If you turn off Starlink to save power while you are moving, it might take a long time to reestablish a connection if it is in a different place than when it was shutdown. Based on experience it seems longer if you are still moving. An hour is not unexpected. Be aware of this, and be sure to give it time to reacquire satellites before you start panicking and making random changes.

For reasons that are not entirely clear to me, when Mobile Priority data is ON and the boat is moving, the antenna will usually orient itself to a horizontal position.

Note: Because this is so complex and situational dependent, you will find a lot of people posting advice on the internet who don’t really understand what’s going on, and make up reasons that might sound good, but are wrong. Consider any advice you get (especially from on-line forums) to be suspect until you know for SURE. That includes my stuff, by the way!

What happens if I forget to turn Priority data on?

If you get offshore, and want to connect, your Starlink will not allow it. All is not lost, however, it WILL let you connect to the Starlink website, where you can toggle Mobile Priority Data on. When you turn on your Starlink system some distance away from where it was last active, it can take some time (an hour!) before it gets a satellite link. Be patient. Once you have a connection, the switch to a full connection happens very quickly after you make the change.

What happens if I forget to turn Priority data off?

Your bill can get very large, very quickly if you are a heavy data user. $2/GB adds up very fast if you are doing video conferences or movie streaming. Don’t forget to turn this off if you are not using it!

Which Antenna Should I Get?

That’s another article…

Does Starlink use a lot of power?

That’s yet another article.