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Not sure if this is marine talk or tech talk, but hey, I’m away sailing & it’s related.

Starlink, bloody amazing! Total game changer for cruising, wifi calling, WhatsApp or any other net comms apps, hi speed interweb anywhere, pair it up with Predict Wind and you have tracking in realtime, over the horizon AIS, their very accurate weather routing blah blah blah.

Island Time squeezed in fitting it a few days before we left, thanks Matt!

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On 13/08/2024 at 12:31 PM, El Toro said:

Matt, I cant tell you how much I wish you hadn't installed it for him.....

Huh? I'm a bit slow tonight - I don't follow, so I have to ask - why is that?

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14 hours ago, Island Time said:

Huh? I'm a bit slow tonight - I don't follow, so I have to ask - why is that?

Ignore him Matt, he’s just a sore loser. A few nice photos of beautiful Lau Group Islands & beaches & he goes all septic! 

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2 hours ago, Nathan1000 said:

Hey Bad Kitty, give us a run down on set up and running costs. Must be a game changer to have good weather and comms always on.

OK costs, special price from JB hifi, about $350, but even normally only about $400.

We bought a tricky quick detach mount from Starmount, so 2 bolts & it’s off & onto the camper van. That was the most expensive part, but a normal Starmount flat mount is about $500-$600 US. There’s probably other options there, and I have seen them just stuck in a rod holder, but our flat mount makes it only about 60mm high on the cabin top. And removes the tracking motors, so it uses less power.

Then talk to Island Time, (Matt) about your installation.

We added a Predict Wind data hub, which has added benefits, tracking, better forecasting etc, and AI Polars, taken from real time tracking of your yacht performance in the current weather. So their weather routing gets really accurate.

And over the horizon AIS, set to any range you want out to 300 miles. We’ve set it to 100 miles, I guess 50 would be plenty, but that’s only a couple of hours with us doing 10-12 knots & a ship doing 18knots.

Anyway, super happy with it, and of course you get to send pics to all your mates stuck in winter!

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Running costs, $199/month, and when offshore (between countries) priority data is required, $3.45 GB.

Once you arrive i.e. in Fiji, turn off priority data & back to $199/month. On the passage, we used $80 of data and that included weather, tracking, phone calls as required, with no restrictions. So if you’re not stupid, downloading moves & stuff it’s very affordable.

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4 hours ago, Bad Kitty said:

Ignore him Matt, he’s just a sore loser. A few nice photos of beautiful Lau Group Islands & beaches & he goes all septic! 

Torturing the workers is just mean man.....

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We were fairly early adopters and have had it a couple of years now. Standard RV fitting was all you could get back then and it still works fine. Never missed a beat. Downloading Raymarine updates at anchor was a novelty.

But our best fix was solving an auto pilot glitch that had had us hand steering for 300 miles to that point. We did that by video link from Pt Pegasus, Stewart Island.

The bad thing is you can work from the boat, as I am today from Oneroa. Overall more days on the boat I guess so I'll take that.

Excellent idea on the bigger AIS radius BK.

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Just did two months cruising  around Normandy, Southern UK, Isle of Scilly, Wales, Ireland, Western Highlands and Outer Hebrides etc. My Brother was able to run a business MS team meeting no problem, while I sailed the boat around the Lizard, as well as access server documents etc no issue...game-changer for remote-working. Geo-fencing was super-strict up the Irish Sea and in parts of South East England. Awesome for weather, Predict-wind, streaming music, movies, and CFD trading all now readily accessible. 

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6 hours ago, splat said:

Just did two months cruising  around Normandy, Southern UK, Isle of Scilly, Wales, Ireland, Western Highlands and Outer Hebrides etc. My Brother was able to run a business MS team meeting no problem, while I sailed the boat around the Lizard, as well as access server documents etc no issue...game-changer for remote-working. Geo-fencing was super-strict up the Irish Sea and in parts of South East England. Awesome for weather, Predict-wind, streaming music, movies, and CFD trading all now readily accessible. 

Each to their own, but personally being so connected to the online world via Starlink when sailing is just one step too far to me.  When I go sailing I want to escape all that, not have MS team meetings.

That's just me, I respect people that use their time onboard differently and I will probably find that in a few years I am in the minority.

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11 hours ago, Zozza said:

Each to their own, but personally being so connected to the online world via Starlink when sailing is just one step too far to me.  When I go sailing I want to escape all that, not have MS team meetings.

That's just me, I respect people that use their time onboard differently and I will probably find that in a few years I am in the minority.

Yeah i get that, but it’s on a breaker! Flick it left & you’re out of touch. And for us it’s not a choice of being in touch or not.

It’s a choice of having 3 months in the tropics on the cat, while checking in with the office now & again, or staying at home?

If you don’t want to have a zoom call, don’t have it. I’d have starlink just for the weather.

So, 3 months here, or stay home? Mmmm?

 

fa47744a-1b4a-4059-a05b-c8d1c7362f6d.jpeg

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1 hour ago, Bad Kitty said:

Yeah i get that, but it’s on a breaker! Flick it left & you’re out of touch. And for us it’s not a choice of being in touch or not.

It’s a choice of having 3 months in the tropics on the cat, while checking in with the office now & again, or staying at home?

If you don’t want to have a zoom call, don’t have it. I’d have starlink just for the weather.

So, 3 months here, or stay home? Mmmm?

 

fa47744a-1b4a-4059-a05b-c8d1c7362f6d.jpeg

Surely posting this photo breaches the site rules? It must be contrary to the terms and conditions?

Posting content that deliberately antagonises other site users, it's just blatant trolling now.

I mean, here I am, stuck in Auckland on a rainy grey weekend, two bored kids in the house, a very long list of boat maintenance jobs confronting me, and Bad Kitty is posting this sort of inflammatory and controversial material... 

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16 hours ago, John B said:

Is it running on 12 Volts or through an inverter?

Through an inverter off a lithium bank on a Garcia 52. Running Starlink by far the biggest draw on a daily basis other than the watermaker. Interesting philosophical comments not wanting to be connected. The boat wouldn't exist without the ability to pay for it; and with a budgeted opex of minimum 130k kiwi per annum - I think being connected to the things that fund annual activities necessary. The plan for the next few years at least is for the boat to be used 3-6 mnths each year at present there remains a need for the boat owner to be able to engage and direct his business interests in real time with each of his CEOs and wider senior staff.

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