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• Yachting World
• Digital Edition

Starlink for yachts: true remote connection for your boat

• November 17, 2022

Phil Johnson looks at Starlink for cruising sailors and asks if internet everywhere and remote switching is set to revolutionise the boating world

Imagine you’re peacefully anchored in a tight cove on the lee of some remote uninhabited island with zero mobile phone reception. But you unexpectedly need to speak with family or a colleague about something important – so you chat by FaceTime. Then you spend the evening streaming a film on Netflix. You don’t even stop to check your connection.

This scenario is getting closer to reality for some cruisers with the release of Starlink RV and Maritime versions. Starlink promises truly unlimited broadband satellite internet service without breaking the bank – but is it really the perfect solution on board?

Starlink is the first in a new generation of low-earth orbiting satellite communications services that promise to deliver low-latency, broadband internet everywhere. Developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Starlink has launched over 2,500 satellites to date – spread out in a diagonal web flying across our horizon. To connect with the network, users purchase a satellite dish (the so called ‘Dishy McFlatface’) and wifi router, assisted by an app downloaded on their phone.

In other words, just plug in the satellite dish and “Boom! you’ve got lightning fast internet everywhere you want to sail!” Or at least that’s the sales pitch that my wife and co-skipper, Roxy, gave me after ordering a Starlink RV unit to install on our 1986 Cheoy Lee Pedrick 47, Sonder, which we’ve called home for nearly four years while living and working remotely.

Taking delivery of Starlink.

Around two months ago a large cardboard box from Starlink arrived. With excitement, we tore into it and put Dishy with its heavy four-legged stand straight on top of the deck, connecting the 75ft cable to the router – which also serves as the power supply – and opened the app to configure. The whole process took all of five minutes and soon the dish’s motor stirred to life, tilting the antennae from one side of the horizon to the other.

From our relatively remote anchorage on the Dalmatian coast of Croatia, we were instantly getting download speeds of over 100 Mbps – far exceeding that of the local LTE cellular network. Impressed by our experience, I asked some other sailors using Starlink RV to see if they too had positive results.

Lain and Brioni Cameron are currently cruising the Caribbean aboard their Leopard 47 catamaran Indioko while documenting their adventures on the YouTube channel RedSeas . Since installing Starlink, the bandwidth and reliability is so good they’ve started a video conferencing collaboration with other YouTubers, something that “simply couldn’t have been done under 4G solutions,” notes Lain.

Like us, they previously used a combination of range boosters, wifi reachers, and cell phone hotspots to manage their digital life, but still found themselves occasionally going to shore “in search of a cafe with reasonable wifi connection.” Since testing Starlink successfully at anchor between St Martin and Grenada, that’s a habit they’ve been able to break.

But it’s not just the Mediterranean and Caribbean. Dave and Amy Freeman video conference with kids in schools from the rugged coastline anchorages of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, in part using Starlink. They run the non-profit Wilderness Classroom, teaching the natural world while sailing aboard their 35ft steel gaff-rigged cutter Iron Bark. Before Starlink, they say: “We found some locations had a signal that was too weak for us to video conference with schools.” Now they’ve used Starlink reliably all around Newfoundland and Southern Labrador.

The first installation using the stand

The fine print

This might all sound brilliant, but what’s the cost and fine print? Starlink RV is a non-geofenced version of the original Starlink. This means you can use it anywhere within the continent it is shipped, and use it outside the country of initial use for up to 60 days at a time. If you’re using Starlink past the 60-day time limit you’ll need to change the country associated with the account.

However, while Starlink RV includes ‘mobility’ (ie the ability to use the dish in locations other than the address it’s registered to) it does not support ‘in-motion use’ from, say, a moving vehicle or yacht. The terms make it clear that such use will void your warranty. The support page says: “While our teams are actively working to make it possible to use Starlink on moving vehicles (eg automobiles, RV or campervans, boats), Starlink is not yet configured to be safely used in this way.”

Furthermore, there are still dead zones around the world where Starlink either doesn’t yet have licensing approval or the location is too distant from supporting ground stations for the satellites to relay your connection. For the moment, this includes the open ocean, although I’ve heard anecdotally of RV users getting service on passages such as in the middle of the Mediterranean and across the Bay of Biscay. You can check the coverage maps for both RV and Maritime users at starlink.com/map, which also shows the dates for planned expansion roll-out.

There are some other considerations to make. Dishy is not a passive antennae like on an Iridium sat phone, it’s a power hungry phased-array antennae. I measured 40-50Wh in initial testing. And while it’s relatively weatherproof, the system is cumbersome to set up on deck unless you mount Dishy out of the way of rigging. As the crew of Indioko commented: “We see Starlink as a work and entertainment system rather than a replacement for safety systems like Iridium.”

The Freemans also keep their Dishy stowed below decks while under way.

Starlink has released a Maritime version geared towards commercial use. The upgrade comes with two professionally installed dishes, and promises soon-to-be-global coverage using satellite cross-link technology to expand range further into the oceans. This package, though, comes at a significant price hike: $10,000 of hardware and $5,000 per month of service. This version is suitable for superyachts, cruise ships, and tankers. By comparison, Starlink RV has one-time hardware costs of $599 and unlimited data at $135 per month.

For most cruising sailors needing reliable internet in remote anchorages around Europe and North America, the RV service will cover their needs. In two months of using our new Starlink, we’ve been up and down the coasts of Croatia and across the Adriatic to Italy without service ever dropping. The network speeds have been equal or faster than the mobile service offered in these places. For us, as remote workers that need consistent and fast internet everyday to run our e-commerce business, Starlink has been nothing short of a game changer for our cruising plans.

NASA has expressed concern that Starlink satellites could cause a “significant increase in the frequency of conjunction events and possible impacts to NASA’s missions”

Truly remote

Since we moved aboard in 2018, ‘getting connected’ has been a constant effort. Island hopping between different Caribbean countries required maintaining half a dozen local SIM cards, each with different confusing data plans. When we sailed the remote Hebrides I’d be steering into lochs nervously looking at both our navigation chart and our cellular signal levels. The stress of not having a reliable go-anywhere alternative adds a cautionary asterisk when advising others about a ‘workaboard’ life.

That outlook is thankfully starting to change. “Feeling more freedom to anchor where we want rather than feeling the need to be next to a cell tower when we are working,” is how the Freemans put it. Farther-flung cruising destinations like the Pacific or high latitudes, where traditional workaboards couldn’t dream of sailing, are potentially in reach once Starlink builds out its satellite network. I write this article anchored in the remote Kornati islands of Croatia – a place devoid of cell reception that two months ago, before Starlink, we couldn’t have stayed in for any length of time.

Starlink hacks

It’s still early days for this technology so sailors have been getting creative to adapt the RV version of Starlink, which was designed for campervans and similar, to use on yachts. There are several Facebook groups where users share ‘hacks’ for Starlink (all of which are strictly at owners’ risk and not condoned in any way).

A popular, though warranty-voiding, solution is to disable the actuating motor by drilling into the back of the unit. This keeps the antenna stationary and pointing straight up, reducing power consumption while making it easier to mount. In some cases, this also seems to reduce intermittent dropouts in the signal.

Dave and Amy Freeman are live-linking with schools from remote areas of Newfoundland

Dropouts can also occur from blockages in the horizon, as the crew of Iron Bark experienced when anchored near very steep cliffs. We found our Starlink fits perfectly into a fishing rod holder mounted on the stainless steel arch above our bimini top. Its position allows an open view of the horizon that’s clear of all rigging and other electronics. Iain and Brioni of Indioko plan to fabricate two-mounting positions using a 3D printer, one for either hull of their catamaran. This way they can place Dishy on the “preferred side of the boat for clear views of the sky”.

Another much-talked-about hack is modifying the power supply to run on DC power from the house batteries rather than AC power from an inverter. This modification requires cannibalising the router to build your own power over ethernet (POE) board (beyond the technical grasp of me!), but has reportedly further reduced Dishy’s power consumption for some users.

Race for the skies

There are further options just over the horizon that should offer more ‘plug & play’ solutions. OneWeb is promising to compete with Starlink, with a service due to start in 2023. Amazon has pledged to build its own low-earth orbit network, while established satcom companies Iridium and ViaSat are also upgrading their networks.

Things are changing fast with this burgeoning industry. In just the span of a few years, we’ve gone from hoisting a cellphone up the mast in a dry bag for reception to not even thinking about how we might get online when sailing for a remote anchorage.

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• Digital edition

Digital Switching: controlling your yacht from your phone

• Sam Fortescue
• December 5, 2022

How do you make your boat easy to control, from any screen on board or even remotely and save weight? Sam Fortescue talks us through digital switching

Just imagine this. As you graze a sandwich at your desk one Friday, you flick open an app on the phone to check what the wind is doing on the mooring. The boat briefly fires up the instruments to give you real-time data, before powering them down again. A balmy 12 knots, just as forecast. It’s the green light for a weekend sail.

As you jump on the train down to the marina, you fire up the app again, checking battery and fuel levels. There’s still a trickle of power coming out of the solar panels, and the wind turbine is doing its job in the breeze, so no need to start the generator yet. You switch the fridge on instead – it’ll be down to temperature by the time you arrive.

Checking another app shows that the tender is just where it should be in the dinghy dock, with the outboard also present and correct. It’s only a few hundred metres upstream to the mooring – an easy ride for the electric outboard. As you round the last bend in the trot, you press a button on the key fob. Lights in the cockpit, rigging and at the transom wink on, and the instruments spring to life.

The multimedia unit starts piping the relaxing tones of your favourite song into the cockpit, and the alarm is deactivated. The bathing platform lowers into position for an easy landing.

Well, imagine no longer, because all this is already possible.

It might sound far-fetched, but boats are already being built with these capabilities, thanks to digital switching and remote monitoring. And, as with most innovations at sea, they are trickling down from the elusive world of superyachting.

The digital switching screen on the Bavaria C50 gives control over a whole range of systems

Digital Control

If you buy a new boat today, the chances are it contains some form of digital switching. More than just a different sort of on/off button, it is a powerful way to control boat systems that is built around a flexible network. Or, as Nick LaRoche of US-based PowerPlex describes it: ‘Fuses, mechanical circuit breakers and switches are replaced by a digital switching power distribution system that runs on a CAN (Controller Area Network) bus network.’

Now, weight is a clear benefit of digital switching, in that you don’t need hefty two-pole wire runs between switch panels, toggle switches and the equipment itself. The switch can be anywhere and the unit can be anywhere as long as they’re all plugged into the CAN bus. In effect, you simply need a 12V/24V ring main and a CAN bus backbone running around the boat.

Digital switch modules located near the equipment itself then plug into power and network with very short cable runs. On a 30-50ft sailing boat, the saving in copper alone amounts to tens of kilograms, even including the extra weight of the control modules.

Growing list of advantages

In the early days of this technology, it was thought that factors such as weight and space were chief among the key advantages. Brands such as New Zealand’s C-Zone (now a Brunswick brand alongside B&G) and Sweden’s Empirbus (Garmin), grew on the back of such claims.

‘Our main benefits used to be related to weight and space saving, installation time saved for builders,’ says Mark Harnett of C-Zone, one of the three major digital switching brands for boats. ‘But this message has changed in recent years to ease of use.’ That’s because each element in a digital switching network is independent and can be programmed to behave in whatever way you wish. You can set dimmers, time switches, high and lower power actuators. The touch of a single button could set multiple actions in motion – creating a mood on board, or readying the boat for sea or swimming.

Turn on the lights before you arrive at your boat. Photo: Morten Strauch

Similarly, the displays that provide the user interface are very flexible. You can install a dedicated display from C-Zone, Empirbus or similar. Or you can just use your existing plotter.

Manufacturers like B&G, Raymarine and Garmin have all built support for digital switching into their multifunction displays, so you can be panning through charts one moment and putting on the navigation lights the next – all from the same touchscreen display.

This is a very efficient way to provide digital controls, especially in a scenario where the boat already has more than one display – perhaps at the chart table and at the helm. ‘The cost of displays and control units at the dash or chart table can be reduced, as CZone can control things like power electronics and batteries, monitor tanks, control audio and heating/aircon,’ says CZone’s Harnett. ‘This can remove multiple redundant controllers and allow interaction between these devices, at the same time the user gets the benefit of a single user interface to learn, instead of having to get to grips with multiple.’

Numerous long wiring runs add significant weight to a boat, which CAN bus switching can mitigate.

Getting digital switching

This technology is very much a means to an end, a tool that is perhaps not often glimpsed in its own right. If you look behind the scenes of Hanse and Moody sailing boats, you’ll find C-Zone switching. Oyster yachts and the composite wizards at McConaghy also use it.

This breadth of use from production yachts to custom one-offs is possible because the system is modular, so it can be as complex or as simple as you need. The first hint you’re likely to get that a boat features the technology is from the control panel or plotter. If there is a natty-looking display with touchscreen switches, then you’ve got it.

For the rest of us, there is a refit route to digital switching which can make sense, ‘especially if you are doing a more extensive electrical systems refit’, according to C-Zone’s Harnett. For smaller boats, there are entry-level modules at lower costs.

For CZone, that means the Contact 6 (£380), which is able to switch six different loads on or off up to 7.5 amps. In addition to the control screen on the MFD, a host of keypads (from £250) with custom labelling can give remote control over key functions without the need for a dedicated display or networked plotter.

Raymarine takes a slightly different approach with its new YachtSense. It is aiming for more ambitious refits, with a modular approach that was built out of the Empirbus system.

A master unit neatly plugs into slivers of whatever additional switching units you need – low power, high power, reversible motor and signal. In this neat package, you can control and oversee every circuit on board, but it comes at a price: €995 (£867) for the master controller and €395 (£345) for each additional sliver.

Since Garmin took EmpirBus in-house, the system has been reoriented towards the manufacturer’s own plotters, which naturally enough offer the greatest customisation and control options. But the system will still integrate with any plotter system from Raymarine, B&G or Furuno.

Empirbus is built around a master control unit which activates different modules around the boat. Prices are not published, but they are comparable with Raymarine.

For smaller boats looking to retrofit some form of digital switching, Garmin has developed the Empirbus hardware into an all-in-one unit called the Boat Switch. It plugs straight into the NMEA2000 system for chartplotter control, and you can run up to 20 circuits off it, on either 10- or 5-amp channels. At £950, this is an efficient approach if you already have a Garmin instrument system.

Or you could use the SailSense PowerRail (ca. €2,520/ £2,196), which can control 24 circuits up to 16A, 8 sensors and 3 battery banks. Both of these systems are centralised and require the full run of cabling from the unit to the load, as in a traditional set-up.

The new Oyster 495’s helm pod gives you a smorgasbord of control without leaving the wheel. Photo: Morten Strauch

Alternative brands

There are other brands as well, but they are often focused on market niches. Italy’s Blink was in the vanguard of digital switching, and provides keypads to the America’s Cup campaigns of both Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli and Emirates Team New Zealand, as well as to rally drivers. Its simple Keybox product has been hugely successful in the US, where it is retrofitted as a replacement for defunct DS (disconnect standby) switches.

Yacht Devices has a handy 4-channel control circuit, which plugs into a NMEA 2000 network and can be used on any plotter with support for CZone. The YDCC-04 costs £249 and its four-load capacity can be doubled by adding a £119 additional control post.

In the future

As with everything in life, digital connectivity is becoming more deeply embedded. All the manufacturers I spoke to were reluctant to divulge future plans, but they all looked to the automotive and domestic markets as pathfinders for digital switching and the internet of things aboard.

At the moment, it is all about functionality – allowing us to do things remotely and easily using a single interface. ‘We believe the digital ecosystem will grow to include “off the vessel”, and that users will have access to their onboard systems from anywhere through a mobile experience,’ says Harnett. ‘A single common user interface across multiple platforms like phones, tablets, on board multifunction and navigation displays is essential for a best-in-class ecosystem.’

Raymarine, like other brands, builds digital switching functionality into all of its multi-function display (MFD) chart plotters

This way, interested guests are able to look at charts, tracks and instrument data from the boat via their phones. ‘A connected phone or tablet becomes an additional display presenting data from the plotter,’ says Peter Ingram of Raymarine. ‘Guest crew can look at the charts for position and help with depth monitoring. It offers a more inclusive experience if the captain invites them to the network.’

Integration with companion apps to the big three instrument makers (Raymarine, Navico and Garmin) will make it easier to export some of this information for sharing with those not on board.

As boats become more automated, with electric winches, in-mast furling and magic trim (the new Oyster 495, for instance, trims the main using a hydraulic ram in the boom), it will become more logical to control these systems via a single unified touchscreen display. It will also be more common to have fuel, water and waste tanks digitally monitored, and for valves, switches and pumps in everything from electric heads to watermakers, solar panels to generators reporting to and controlled from the display.

Centralised control means you only need to learn how to use one operating system, rather than lots of separate ones

Integrated coding

Key to getting all this in place is for different manufacturers to open up the coding behind their own controllers so that it can be integrated. At the moment, there is limited compatibility between different brands. Take CZone and Mastervolt, for instance. Both owned by Brunswick, and both using a CAN bus to talk to their network, yet you need to buy a dedicated black box ‘translator’ in order to get them talking to each other.

Dave Dunn, senior sales director marine at Garmin, says that integration is the buzzword of the moment. ‘There’s more integration going on than ever before – from lighting to powershades,’ he says. ‘Lighting is very popular because you can get more customisation, but also pumps, gensets (generators) and so on. It’ll be like a smart home – you push one button and several things happen.’

Despite all the buzz about modern NMEA 2000 systems, this form of CAN bus is a mid-bandwidth form of communication – ideal for limited sensor data and status reports. Functions such as radar and advanced sonar generate more intensive data, so they run over Ethernet. But even here, manufacturers are beginning to feel constrained.

Ethernet standards have been upgraded over time, so the old category 5 systems, which were capable of transmitting 100Mbps, have been superseded by category 6 with up to 100 times the speed – that is, a blistering 10Gbps.

CZone’s system works well on small as well as large boats

Network upgrade

Now, most of us will never be troubled by this distinction, because our instrument networks amount to one or two MFDs, a radar and a perhaps a basic sonar. This is well within the capabilities of category 5 Ethernet.

But superyachts are another matter, and where the top end of the market leads, the rest of us follow. ‘If these systems are going to get bigger and faster and smarter, we’re going to need a new network backbone,’ says Dunn. ‘It’s at the very high end, but it will start to trickle down. Higher bandwidth will open up the doors to tablets and wireless communications, with wireless wind transducers and wireless sonar. Higher bandwidth will allow these systems to be more reliable.’

NMEA has an answer to this, called OneNet – a high powered Ethernet standard. But NMEA membership is expensive, so smaller manufacturers are tempted to use open source standards instead.

Autonmous sailing vessels are already a reality. Their sensing and control tech will become more commonplace for yachts

Battery and inverter maker Victron has done just that, in the hope that it will encourage others to work with it. And it has signed up as a partner Oceanvolt, one of the key players in electric propulsion and the future of electric boating.

In the end, of course, all this leads in just one direction: automation. The era of the fully autonomous vessel is already upon us, with boats from the tiny 2m Sailbuoy to the giant Mayflower catamaran successfully crossing the Atlantic without human input.

What is not yet possible is for a boat to unmoor itself and motor or sail to meet you elsewhere. But we’re getting to the point where boats, with a skipper aboard, can navigate themselves. ‘Between digital switching and these higher bandwidth systems, you could hypothetically have an autopilot that takes readings from radar and sonar, and makes path predictions,’ says Dunn. ‘With machine learning and AI, it won’t happen in five years, but it could be a 10- to 15-year thing.’

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The Importance of Wi-Fi Onboard a Yacht

• By David Schmidt
• Updated: May 26, 2021

Years ago, the most common questions guests asked upon stepping aboard a yacht were about where to stash a sea bag, finding their stateroom, and the day’s itinerary and forecast. In 2021, two other questions loom larger: the yacht’s Wi-Fi network name and its password. For most landlubbers, the source of connectivity is irrelevant, so long as the speeds are fast, there’s a good signal throughout the vessel, and their data is secure.

One not-so-humble piece of equipment helps to ensure that those things are all true.

A wireless router is the device that distributes a secure signal to onboard computers, multifunction displays and networked devices. The router also creates the wireless local area network on the yacht. These routers—known as access points, or APs in industry parlance—are typically black boxes with software that replaces most hard-button interface controls. After equipping a yacht with the right antennas and airtime plans, choosing the best routers can make the most difference in terms of signal strength and access on board.

Unlike most marine-specific equipment, routers typically work equally well ashore and aboard. One difference, however, is that while terrestrial-based routers typically deal with a single signal (such as Comcast internet), onboard routers often deal with three: satellite, cellular and long-range Wi-Fi signals.

“Aruba routers are signal-agnostic and can support multiple internet uplink connections,” says Dave Chen, senior product marketing manager for Aruba, which is a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. “They’re customizable, so if you’re at sea, you can have cellular, satellite or Wi-Fi bridging used as the internet uplink while coming into port, and you can have a single router connect to them, depending on which signal is available.”

Chen says some routers can combine cellular, satellite and Wi-Fi signals, as well as simultaneously use multiple internet connections to bolster data-transfer speeds and bandwidth.

Determining how far internet signals can travel from a router and how many APs are required to deliver a signal evenly across a yacht can get complicated. Success often depends on the distances and the boatbuilding materials involved.

“RedBox internal Wi-Fi typically works extremely well on any yacht up to approximately 60 feet LOA,” says Sue Wildgoose, director at MailASail, which manufactures RedBox routers. Yachts with numerous closed-off belowdecks compartments typically create higher hurdles than yachts with open interior spaces, she adds.

Chen agrees. “In carpeted spaces in open areas, one AP can cover 1,500 to 2,500 square feet fairly reliably,” he says. “When spaces get smaller and have more walls and obstructions, the math gets more complex.”

Smaller yachts with more fiberglass, Chen says, typically allow for more favorable coverage through walls and surfaces, while larger vessels with more steel bulkheads and firewalls will block more Wi-Fi signals.

Wi-Fi planning tools let owners and installers determine the optimal place to install a router (or several routers), Chen says.

“The best approach might be as simple as a single router near the helm, like an Aruba AP-505H with a USB dongle for cellular uplink, or it could be an SD-WAN gateway or controller with built-in LTE and multiple APs professionally installed inside the yacht to cover more interior and exterior areas, including the engine room and staterooms in the bow,” Chen says. “The only real limit is the imagination of the owner and how much room there is on board.”

While one AP can likely service a 60- to 80-foot yacht, larger yachts typically require multiple routers. Often, these routers can be set up as a mesh network to distribute signal evenly throughout a yacht. Also, much like at-home WLANs, installing simple networks aboard smaller boats can usually be a DIY project. Professional installers are often required for more-complex jobs, according to Chen and Rick Driscoll, KVH’s vice president for service development and implementation.

Once installed, WLANs provide benefits beyond signal distribution. For example, Wildgoose says, “RedBox uses our own teleport firewall to restrict web access and lock down any onboard devices like smartphones, tablets and laptops to optimize data speeds and traffic.” This capability, she says, is particularly important when using satellite communications because background data use can get expensive. “Data is passed through this firewall, allowing us to block or allow traffic on a per-application basis. Customers can also use their preferred virtual-private-network software.”

Good routers also provide network security and prevent hackers from accessing data that moves across a network.

“Aruba’s products all support the latest wireless security features, such as WPA3 and Enhanced Open encryption, in addition to the use of secure 802.1X authentication where required,” Chen says. “All Aruba products support web-content filtering, and wireless intrusion detection and prevention, which allows the routers to look for rogue APs and wireless-based attacks to alert the network that a security incident has occurred.”

Because WLANs deliver a signal to all networked devices, they’re also a great way of sharing data to devices from the yacht’s NMEA 0183 or NMEA 2000 network. While this ability can sometimes require a third-party NMEA gateway, “this is cool and fun stuff that we like to support, as everyone has their favorite navigation app,” Wildgoose says.

So, if you’re equipping a yacht with communication equipment, or if you already own a bevy of antennas but are concerned about cybersecurity or are experiencing less-than-ideal signal distribution, add a new router (or two) to your list. The costs are negligible compared to the price of antennas and airtime, and the benefits are as strong as the signals these routers deliver.

Better still, modern routers are typically capable of supporting multiple WLANs, meaning you can have a private owner’s network and a shared guest network. Remembering the passwords, however, is still up to you.

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