Update to the update... Just another day after publishing the following post we received another email. Paraphrasing: "You are being offered a discount for purchasing a new "high performance" dish, and with discount only costs $1,900. Oh, and if you don't take our generous offer, your standard dish will become non-functional on the water." Incredible. 

We departed yesterday aboard our 40ft cutter, sailing in a light easterly breeze from Marsh Harbor in the Abacos of the Bahamas. Overnight we observed a growing countercurrent, an offshoot eddy from the Gulf Stream. A flotilla of vessels (now several miles apart) converse this morning about the eddy, and also discuss a live webcast we watched this morning about the weather for our passage up the US East Coast. I’m publishing this post at 185nm east of Cape Canaveral. How is this possible?

Almost two weeks ago I published Elon Phone Home, an intro to our installation and use of Elon on the water, a spectacular Starlink satellite internet service. Here’s an update.

As though listening covertly, a short two days later we received that dreaded (but not sure when expected) email threat: “to ensure uninterrupted service on the ocean, please take action…”. Essentially, the letter briefly states that we violated their terms of use by being on the ocean. In other words… You got busted!

How many of you read that fine print legalese when signing up for a service online?

Several of our cruising colleagues here in the Caribbean hoped that Elon would give us more time, but knew that the writing was on the proverbial wall. So, now we’ve upgraded to their “minimalist” ocean-allowed service plan. Yeah, it’s more than double cost compared to stationary land users, but still amazing. And now that we are (or at least we believe we are) fully compliant, we won’t worry about being cut off.

Genius it is, their marketing. Get ‘em hooked, they’ll keep asking for more and then raise the prices. Yes, we’re addicted to data. Data to tell us real-time animated weather and ocean currents. Want to avoid the latest Gulf Stream eddy currents? Want to call mom via WiFi? Just open the iPad, phone or laptop. On demand. Pretty cool for us floating data junkies.