How to Get Internet on a Sailboat While Cruising
To keep Wi-Fi while sailing, your sailboat or yacht needs a backup for Starlink. Starlink struggles when the boom or sails block the Starlink dish or the boat leans in a swell, and cellular fades once the coastline drops behind you.
Speedify is an app that uses Starlink and cellular at the same time. Your calls, weather downloads and streaming use both, with more traffic on whichever internet connection is stronger, and when Starlink weakens, Speedify switches your traffic to cellular automatically, then back again.
Speedify keeps you online when Starlink drops, wherever you are
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Internet on a Sailboat Near the Coast vs Offshore
Cell towers along most coastlines reach well past the shore, often 10 to 20 miles depending on the terrain, the carrier and how high your antenna sits. A cruising boat hopping between anchorages spends a lot of time inside that range. On an offshore passage, you eventually sail beyond every tower, and satellite is the only option left.
If you plan routes close to shore, island hopping or sailing along the coast, you get the most out of using satellite and cellular together, because that’s where both are available.
How to Use Starlink and 4G/5G Cellular Together on a Sailboat
Running both internet connections through one router means neither has to carry the whole load alone. A Powered by Speedify router aboard uses a Starlink dish together with a cellular modem or a phone hotspot, without you switching between them by hand. The setup is the same as turning a travel router into an internet gateway that combines connections, just mounted below deck instead of in a hotel room.
You don’t need a fixed installation. Speedify also runs directly on a laptop or phone, so you can use Starlink Wi-Fi and a phone hotspot together without any permanent hardware.
How Speedify Keeps Calls and Streaming Going on a Sailboat
Speedify checks the delay and the drops on both internet connections all the time, and moves traffic toward whichever one is working better at that moment. Speedify uses both together instead of picking one, so whenever you have a cellular signal you get more speed than Starlink alone, especially when the sails partly block the Starlink dish.
A video call to family on shore stays up through a sail change or a move to a new anchorage: when the Starlink dish loses its view of the sky or the cellular signal weakens, Speedify switches your traffic to the other internet connection before the call drops.
Power and Mounting for Starlink and Cellular on a Sailboat
Starlink uses a lot of power, so many cruising sailboats run it off the house batteries through an inverter, with enough spare for cloudy days when the solar panels make less. Cellular modems use far less power. They work better with an outside antenna mounted as high as you can, since a masthead or spreader mount often adds more range than a better modem does.
- Mount the cellular antenna as high on the rig as the cable run allows.
- Wire the Starlink dish through its own breaker, so a power blip doesn’t take down the whole setup.
- Download Speedify on the router or on the laptop that shares the internet, and connect both internet connections.
- If your cellular data plan is small, set cellular to Backup in the Speedify app. Speedify then uses it only when Starlink drops.
- At the dock, turn off one internet connection at a time to check that Speedify switches to the other before you head out.
What to Expect from Sailboat Internet Offshore
Once a passage takes you out of cellular range, Speedify has only Starlink to use, and your internet is as good as your Starlink internet connection. Speedify needs at least two working internet connections to help, and it can’t create a cellular signal where there’s no tower to reach. What Speedify does fix are the coastal gaps and dropouts where both are available, which is where coastal cruisers spend most of their time.
Speedify Is Used on Millions of Devices Worldwide
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For yacht charter and yacht management companies: Speedify can combine Starlink and cellular on every boat you run, for crew and guests. Contact Us to plan the setup for your fleet.
For sailors: Download Speedify to use Starlink and your phone’s cellular data together on board.
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