How do we handle communications while living on a boat in foreign countries? For years we struggled connecting with the “outside world” while living on our boat. We had to find local coverage, if it was available. The alternative was Iridium Go which allowed you communication access to text messages, emails, and weather. But you could not access the internet (Facebook, Instagram, Google, etc…).
Two years ago Starlink arrived! It was a total game changer for us. We purchased the equipment in NZ which was about $170 USD and paid $126 USD per month for “unlimited” communication access. However, we were supposed to remain in and around NZ waters to use our current plan. Well, that doesn’t exactly work out for us being that we visit lots of countries.
Our current plan included “unlimited data communications”. The plan did not allow you to be away from your host country for more than 2 months. We left NZ in April 2024 and travelled though Vanuatu and Marshall Islands.
Our service was cut off in January 2025. Of course, it would happen without any prior notification and on a day, we planned to transit from Rongelap to Alinginae.
Several cruisers received a letter from Starlink. This letter indicated that they would be cut off if they did not return to their host country or change plans. We never received this notification.
Photo of our Starlink dish facing the sky to receive satellites data.
https://www.iridium.com/products/iridium-go/
The Problem
In order to change your host country or service plan you have to be able to receive emails for the dual authentication program. We can’t get emails without Starlink!
However, we were able to communicate with Starlink via their website (despite not having access to the internet).
The problem is that Starlink keeps sending authentication notices and codes to Matt’s email and we cannot access them without internet. The irony!
The Solution
We kept the bare minimum subscription of our Iridium Go account as back up (thank goodness). This basic plan costs $70 USD/month and only provides 5 minutes of talk time and a few text messages. This plan allows us to text, email, and get weather. However, each communication is charged at astronomical rates.
We contacted Customer Service at Iridium Go. We increased our subscription plan to the “unlimited plan”, at $170/mo. This will allow us to make the necessary communications and receive weather updates. Communications from Iridium Go are limited. For example, we cannot receive attachments or photos. Both the email and text messages need to be short and succinct. It can be tedious, but it is way better than nothing.
The Outcome
We reached out to Starlink’s Customer Support many times. We kept getting responses from “bot’s” and they were not helpful. So, we kept emailing with “need human response” in the subject line. Finally, we got a human who understood our predicament. We rely on communications while under passage. We use Starlink to connect and download weather. When Starlink cut off our communications it became a huge safety issue. So, they restored our connection temporarily.
This allowed us to do the following things:
- Matt wrote a rule for his email. All Starlink emails are automatically sent to our Iridium Go account.
- We added (2) friends to our Starlink account so that they could access codes and verifications should we not be able to in the future.
- We added our Iridium Go email to Starlink
- We downloaded weather for our passage.
Not sure what we will do next. I assume we will have to either the account change address in our home country, change our plan, change our account to another country (Marshall Islands or Fiji), or jump through some other hoops to make our account work longer than 60 days.
Only time will tell.
As you can see we spend a lot of money to stay connected. The above fees do not include the cost of Predict Wind (weather forecasting), hosting the many websites we have, the server, or any ancillary communication needs we may have while on the boat.
Our blog posts run 4-6 weeks behind actual live events. Starlink crashed on us at the end of January 2025. Did you catch our hit and miss with Kwajalein’s army base in our last blog post?
We are similarly concerned and torn about best coms options. We have been using Iridium Go but have just purchased Starlink (yet to enable as we are not sure on best option…).
Thanks for sharing.