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The days of slow or limited connectivity on superyachts are (almost) in our wake, thanks to the advent of Starlink Maritime. Soon, those days will fall out of sight. For the yachting industry, this is a game-changer—no more annoyed bosses grumbling about slow internet, no more dead zones when remote cruising, no more turning off the crew WIFI so that charter guests can stream their favourite shows and, of course, the freedom of being able to send emails mid-Atlantic.
One of the great challenges of yacht communications —patchy internet —will be a thing of the past. Superyacht owners and charterers can carry on their business empires wherever they are, and captains and crew can stay connected, allowing them to run the yacht more efficiently and keep in contact with their loved ones.
Starlink is a network of low earth orbit (LEO) satellites launched by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, offering speeds similar to 4G and 5G. There are currently over 3,300 Starlink satellites in the sky, with the network planning to extend to around 10,000 to cover every last inch of our planet.
Starlink Maritime is a premium offering suited to superyachts, consisting of two flat-panel dishes to install on either side of the yacht to overcome the problem of the yacht superstructure obstructing the required aperture of the sky. While the service initially had no usage limits, Starlink has recently introduced three service tiers to its Maritime offering, with varying data usage limits and pricing options ranging from $250 to $5,000 per month.
Not quite yet. There are still a few black spots, as some countries haven’t signed up to the Starlink network yet, not all the satellites are ‘talking’ to each other effectively, and the coverage doesn’t yet extend across the globe — so mid-ocean blackouts will still be with us for a little longer.
Another downside is that user density affects Starlink performance, with popular cruising areas in the Caribbean experiencing significant slowdowns when the superyachts arrived in the winter of 2022.
One can comfortably predict that these issues will be resolved over time as more Starlink satellites are launched, and glitches are ironed out.
While no doubt some old salts will be a bit nostalgic about the days when you cruised off into the blue and couldn’t be contacted for a while, there’s no question that any technology that improves connectivity will make life on board even better for yacht owners, guests, and crew.
