Starlink on board

A giant box was delivered

Ordering is entirely online and very easy. We opted for the roaming package, which is the best choice given our cruising area. The monthly cost is €100, and you can pause the subscription monthly. With this subscription, there is a surcharge for use on the ocean, where you pay €2.31 per GB.

Within a week, the Starlink package was delivered, in a giant box.

Nice and fast internet!

Personally, I had to get used to the size of the antenna. However, installation is a piece of cake: you connect the router to the antenna and plug it into 220V.

After downloading the app, it's just a matter of naming your WiFi network and setting a password. Then the Starlink antenna automatically starts moving to target satellites, and within 10 minutes you already have blazing-fast internet.

The app indicates that it takes some time for the antenna to be fully calibrated, but despite this, we immediately achieved speeds of over 200Mbps down and 20Mbps up. Wonderful results.

Starlink does use a lot of power

Meanwhile, we mounted the antenna on the stern seat using a NOA OM-H railmount. The antenna stands firmly and has plenty of room to move or go into 'rest mode'.

’Indeed, at night we turn off the Starlink, as it turns out it does use some power, 50 watts on average. If we don't have access to shore power, the Victron Phoenix 12-250 provides ‘dedicated’ 220V, so the Multiplus doesn't have to be used unnecessarily.

The railmount is temporary; we are still waiting for the arch, where, among other things, the Starlink will get its final spot. Then we will also cut the cable and let it come in via a deck grommet.