This is a technical post, so if you’re not interested please feel free to skip it.

With Starlink being so easy and powerful, it’s been very easy to quickly rely on Starlink’s high speed internet access for our journeys. But Starlink is untested, every current user is essentially a beta tester (in my opinion), there are geofencing limitations, and Starlink makes no claims about the usability of its equipment for emergencies.

For the last year we have been using Iridium GO and relying on it in some very remote places for weather and information. While it’s very slow, it’s never let us down.

As much as we’ve quickly fallen in love with our Starlink, it’s a mistake, unseaman like, and dangerous to rely on Starlink for safety for now.

However, being on a budget, maintaining a cell phone, emergency satellite communication, and Starlink, quickly becomes cost prohibitive. The costs could easily exceed $600 per month. On Pasargada we’ve devised a way to have our cake and eat it too. In this post I will explain how we are using our Starlink and Iridium Go! without breaking the budget.

Back in “the day” marine High Frequency radio (Marine SSB or “HAM” radio), like the Icom M-802 pictured below, was critical safety gear aboard.

Why was it so critical? Because unlike VHF radio, the High Frequency (HF) radio could be used to make voice or data transmissions across vast areas. We still participate in HF nets from time-to-time to keep our equipment and skills sharp and I still download weather and email using HF radio for the same reasons. It’s slow, subject to the whims of the sun, requires an extensive array of equipment on board and some pretty technical knowledge. It’s not easy, but when it works it’s pretty magical. We use it as one of the lines of defense in our safety arsenal.

When all works, I can make a “call” using my HF Radio Modem and download weather, email, and more from thousands of miles away. But it’s slow and temperamental.

For sailors that are not billionaires, along came the Iridium GO! within the last two decades. The Iridium Go! is small, relatively inexpensive to buy and costs about $150 (give or take) for an unlimited plan. With this little device we can text, get weather, email, and some web pages. It’s about as slow as Marine HF radio, but it’s not subject to the whims of the solar cycles so it’s more reliable. We can also make voice phone calls in an emergency.

For even less money, about $12 a month, the Garmin inReach is another class of satellite communicator that uses the the Iridium satellite with its global coverage. This little device is mainly designed to be able to trigger an SOS for people like backpackers, skiers, and mariners. Though it has some messaging capabilities, it’s pretty limited, but still has a very reliable global communication capability.

Finally, we have Starlink, the low earth orbit system that has allowed for fast, cheap ($150 a month, give or take), high speed Internet around the globe. With almost no effort, with enough electricity we can have broadband Internet everywhere. It’s pretty awesome, but it’s power hungry and the reliability is completely untested. Last week, for example, the entire system went down for many hours.

Hardware	Initial cost	Monthly cost	Installation Complexity	Usability	Reliability
Marine HF Radio	$1k to $5k	None	Extremely Complex	Difficult	Average to Poor
Iridium GO!	$1k to $1.5k	$160 unlimited	Not complex (Have to run an external antenna for proper usability)	Easy	Good
Garmin In Reach	<$300	$12 to $80	Not complex, pairs for cell phone	Easy	Good
Starlink RV	$400 to $700	$60 to $150	Not complex, plug in router, go	Awesome	Not clear

For Pasargada’s sailing style, Starlink is perfect in many ways. We have plenty of solar and we have converted the Starlink to run off DC power (a post for another day). To save even more power, we have our Starlink setup in a way where we can easily switch it power on-and-off as needed. Furthermore, as we are following the coast of North America and Central America, Starlink works in most of the places we visit, and where it doesn’t work, there are cell phone towers.

But what happens if Starlink suddenly stops working and we don’t have a cell phone tower nearby?

Thanks to our friends at Sea-Tech Systems we have developed a system to save us money and give us peace of mind. The system has three components:

1. An unlimited Flex plan for Iridium GO! Which we can pause/un-pause without needing a new SIM card
   • This plan from Sea-Tech Systems gives us a SIM card that can be paused for a small monthly fee. It also gives us a local number in the US, and unlimited data and minutes.
2. A Garmin InReach with the cheapest monthly plan available
   • This plan is annual, and lets us send messages to anyone using the reliable Iridium network.
3. A Starlink RV plan which we can pause/un-pause as needed

While in-shore, we use the Starlink RV. It meets all our needs for safety (weather, emergency communication, etc). The cellphone (with local SIM or eSIM) is our cheap backup, as is our Marine SSB (for added safety).

When we know we are going to a location that is off-shore or one that we know Starlink does not currently work, we send an email to Sea-Tech. They Un-Pause our Iridium GO! And we send a message to Starlink, they pause our Starlink. In this way we just move the approximately $150 monthly bill from one provider to the other.

Now for the critical part. If we are caught out, and Starlink suddenly stops working for some reason, and there are no working cell phone towers, we could be in real trouble. Here, we use the Garmin inReach to send an email to Sea-Tech. They Un-Pause our Iridium GO! We have access to all the important connectivity, weather, phone, and safety features of the GO. With this we can also arrange to have the Starlink paused as well (though I haven’t fully worked this out yet, it’s less critical to pause Starlink in an emergency. But we will figure it out shortly).

So, the Garmin InReach is our cheap “bridge” to ensure our Iridium GO! Can be flipped on and give us critical communication systems.

And one last question you may ask, why not just rely on Garmin inReach? And the answer is pretty simple, PredictWind weather . PredictWind is critical to our safety and comfort, and you just can’t get it with an inReach, you need Internet Access, Iridium GO! Or marine HF. Yes, we can actually get PredictWind with Marine HF radio, but it’s even more painfully slow than with Iridium GO (which is saying a lot).

So, with this scheme (InReach, Go, Starlink) we believe we have setup a triad of safety. In this way we keep our monthly costs down, we have multiple safety nets, and hopefully, the best of both worlds (high speed internet when we can get it and slow but reliable Iridum when we can’t have Starlink).

We will try all this out in the next six months and keep reporting back. Starlink continues to change, and even Iridium is rolling out some new services, so all of this is a work in progress. But one thing is for sure, on Pasargada, we are not relying on Starlink alone, that could be a disastrous and we will not be caught out.