Starlink has been a technology that many boaters have been interested in because of the potential performance and flexibility. Unfortunately, it is not yet fully supported in all mobile and marine environments. I spent some time over the last few months doing some testing just to see what limitations might exist.
Oh my gosh Steve, could you write a more thorough and specific to my interests and needs article on this subject? I think not! Thanks so much!
Haha - having the same thoughts as @BoatGuyBill here.
Thanks for testing this out and writing this up Steve 
Hah! Thanks to you both @BoatGuyBill and @kymsails for the kind words.
I get asked about Starlink daily - folks think it is a viable alternative even now - and I wanted to spend some time with it to make sure people understood it is not ready for prime time yet, unless you have a very specific use case and clear sky view!
Great read and info. I am aware of the limitations on boats and understand that the eventuality of being able to cruise with it is there but with no real timeline. As usual, Musk chooses his words carefully lol.
Anyway, we currently have Starling on the floating fishing lodge that we’re caretaking on Vancouver Island and it has been pretty impressive. We’ve had it since late September and only experienced one outage so far and that was just a matter of rebooting the router.
Of course our lodge is anchored well in one spot and does not change in orientation.
The weakness is that we are anchored in a very narrow cove with the shorelines on either side of us very close to the lodge and the hills rising steeply. This cuts our sky view down to a very small slice. Add the tree tops to that and our dish is aiming directly into the tops of the trees. It hasn’t been a problem for connectivity though, just for speed. At best we’re only seeing 40 to 60 Mbps. Even so, we’re still able to use Zoom and watch streaming movies on Netflix completely glitch free.
I am crossing my fingers for a speedy deployment of the next generation of satellites with laser communication.
Thanks for the great article and Merry Xmas to you.
Thanks for the report on usability and usage! Always good to hear how others are using Starlink, and what works/doesn’t work.