How To Get The Internet At Sea When Sailing 2025

One of our main problems living this ‘off grid’ lifestyle has been how to get the internet on a sailboat. We knew that to make this lifestyle work long term we would need to work from the sailboat, and that internet would be essential.

What we didn’t know was how we were going to get affordable internet on our sailboat regularly.

Obviously, the ideal would be if we didn’t need the internet. When we set off on this adventure we loved the idea of cutting ties, being free from social media, and living a simpler life.

But even without trying to work, the reality is that, although no one actually needs the internet on a sailboat (we survived without it for centuries right?) it is incredibly useful.

What do you do when you realise you have to use a long line to shore but you have no idea how? Look it up on google.

What do you do when you’re in the middle of nowhere and out of water? Find a supermarket on google maps. What do you do when you’re missing your sister and newborn niece? Skype them.

The internet really isn’t the enemy we sometimes think it is, it’s such an amazing thing that we found we really didn’t want to live without!

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When we moved onto our sailboat one of our first jobs was working out how to get the internet when sailing. Luckily, we bought the sailboat from a marina full of helpful full-time cruisers who couldn’t wait to share their internet hacks with us.

We’ve listed some of the ways to get internet at sea while cruising on a sailboat that we researched intensively below so that hopefully you won’t struggle to get that all-important internet hit.

UPDATE: We have recently installed Starlink on our sailboat and we’re thrilled with the results. Read more in our detailed review or carry on reading for a quick summary.

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Quick List To Getting The Internet While Sailing

• How to get the internet when you’re close to shore
  • Starlink
  • Head to a bar
  • Check into a marina
  • Hotspot from your phone
• How to get the internet at anchor
  • Get a little sneaky
  • Buy a router
• How to get the internet in the middle of the ocean
  • Buy a satellite phone
  • Satellite WiFi hotspot
• Why do you need internet on a sailboat?
• Cutting down on your internet usage

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How To Get The Internet At Sea When Sailing

After living and working on a sailboat for four years, here are our sure-fire ways to get the internet onboard. We hope they help!

If you’re using the internet on your sailboat a lot then you’ll want to consider getting a decent power setup to support it, especially if you’re using it on a laptop. Solar and lithium marine batteries are what we swear by.

⚡ We use BattleBorn LiFePO4 lithium-ion batteries and love them. They are super easy to install and really have changed our lives onboard.
You can check them out here ⚡

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How To Get The Internet When You’re Close To Shore

Here are the best ways to get the internet from your sailboat when you’re close to the shore.

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Starlink on a Sailboat

The promise of Starlink has been enticing the sailing community for a while now, and if it works, it will be a game-changer for getting internet when sailing.

Starlink uses a range of satellites orbiting around the planet to beam superfast internet down to essentially any location on Earth, provided it has a clear view of the sky.

Where the mobile hotspots we currently use tend to max out at around 30 or 40mbps, Starlink users regularly report speeds over 150mbps and as high as 200mbps. For anyone working aboard, this means super fast internet from anywhere in the world, including the middle of the Pacific!

Starlink is also surprisingly cheap considering it offers unlimited internet without roaming charges. At the time of writing, Starlink costs $599 upfront and $99 per month thereafter.

The one catch is that so far it has only been tested on a few sailboats and even fewer sailboats that actually move.

We have just pulled the trigger on ordering Starlink for our sailboat, and once we get it, we’ll be sure to document our findings – both in this guide about how to get the internet when sailing, and most likely in a stand-alone review of Starlink on a sailboat.

Watch this space – and the skies!

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Getting WiFi While Sailing: A Great Excuse to Have a Drink

Perhaps the most obvious, inconvenient, and expensive option is to rely on wifi from bars or restaurants. We spent the first month of cruising without an inverter, and being too scared to med moor anywhere we were stuck without mains power for a long time.

To get around this we spent a lot of time (and money!) in bars, charging our laptops and using the wifi. It’s not always easy to find bars when you’re in remote anchorages so you will need to plan accordingly if this is the option you choose.

You will also need to be prepared for slow internet and be happy to part with well-earned cash for drinks in return. We’ve regularly gone to a cafe to use their advertised internet, only to find it’s basically non-existent. It’s pretty time-consuming and annoying!

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Check Into A Marina

One of the easiest (and most expensive) ways to get the internet on your boat is by checking into a marina. Almost every marina has free WiFi that you can use while you stay.

The upside to this is that the internet is technically free. You won’t be paying for it, as such.

The downside is that you will be paying for the marina berth. In summer in the Med marina expenses are no joke. Think about £80 a night. That could work out as some crazy expensive internet!

If you’re planning to stay in a marina over the winter months, though, to keep you and your boat safe from storms, then you might find you get 4-6 months of internet technically free of charge, as you’d be paying for the marina anyway.

The only thing you’ll want to look into first is how good the internet connection actually is and whether it covers the whole marina. We’ve been in marinas where you can only get the free WiFi from certain berths, because the signal doesn’t stretch far enough.

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Hotspot WiFi From Your Phone On A Sailboat

UK contracts let you use your phone in Europe as you would back at home, and many are now offering contracts that cover much more of the world too. This means you can use the data from your phone to get internet at sea, and hotspot it so you can have the internet on your laptops etc too.

This is a great option if you fly back to England semi-regularly, as many of the plans have a fair usage policy which means you need to be in England for a certain amount of time, or your data gets slashed or cut off.

Many people we have met needing WiFi while sailing has found that if they keep quiet they can get away with longer, but taking out a new contract and hoping for the best may be risky as you will be tied in for the contract term.

NOTE: Since Brexit, many mobile phone network providers are threatening to axe data roaming within Europe. We will try and keep you updated when this happens, but you should check before you sign up for any longer-term contract.

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How To Get The Internet At Anchor

These are the best ways we’ve discovered to get the internet while you’re at anchor. Remember you’re going to need a decent power set up to make this happen!

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Get Sneaky Getting The Internet At Sea!

We have heard of some sneaky cruisers who buy a Wi-Fi aerial. These are little boxes you mount on your mast, backstays, or spreaders that can catch shore wi-fi directly from your boat.

You can usually spot this type of cruiser in an anchorage – they scout the whole area checking where the connection is stronger. If you want to try this option out, you have to keep a few things in mind:

• You will need to be somewhere close to bars or restaurants so that you can reach their Wi-Fi, and you will need to choose where you anchor based on where you can get strong enough signal. As we find anchoring a stressful enough exercise as it is, this wasn’t the best option for us!
• You will still need to get the Wi-Fi password, so you will have to buy at least one drink (or try asking other cruisers if they know the passwords) This may be a good option if your budget is really tight!

There are some booster models which can be coupled with a SIM card, meaning you can boost your phones Wi-Fi if you can’t find it somewhere onshore.

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Buy A Router

We both need access to the internet while we work from the boat, so we bought a router that accepts a sim card and took out a pay-as-you-go contract with a big data plan that we use as dedicated internet. That way we can both use the internet just as we would at home.

This is the one we use and was the best one available at the time. It’s an expensive investment but well worth it, and we’ve been lucky to have internet when cruisers around us can’t pick up signal.

But since we bought ours these cheaper routers have been released so you might want to give these a try instead-we have no idea how good they are but we wanted to show you can do it cheaper!

Top Tip: Adam wired up our router to run on a drill battery so that if our internet signal is weak we can run it up the mast and get a much better signal. Just chuck it in a waterproof bag, attach it to a spare halyard and run it up to the top.

So far it works a treat!

✅ Shop the best router for your sailboat

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Getting The Internet In The Middle Of Sea

As we’ve previously mentioned, the best solution for this may be Starlink (though we’re yet to try it out on an ocean crossing so it’s not totally reliable just yet).

If you can’t risk it then here are the alternative options.

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Satellite Phones: Internet For Ocean Crossings

When you’re out at sea, none of these options will work, so if you want internet in the deep blue, you have very few options. You may want to invest in a satellite phone to get WiFi when sailing across oceans.

These are very expensive, and data is extremely costly so you’ll only want to use it for the most basic of needs, such as downloading weather grib files or sending a little message home (your mum will love you for it!) every now and then. The Iridium models are favourites among the sailing community.

✅ Buy the Iridium sat phone here

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Satellite Wi-Fi Hotspot

A satellite wi-fi hotspot, such as the Iridium Go!, is a cheaper option than the satellite phone (but still by no means cheap!). Although we have never used one before we have heard good things from others who have (bar complaints on the price!)

This device will generate a wifi hotspot from anywhere in the world….up mountains, through deserts and across oceans! You can get an unlimited data plan, so if you HAVE to keep connected while sailing across oceans then this may be your best option. But expect to pay for it!

✅ Buy the Iridium Go here

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The Benefits Of Cutting Down On Internet When Sailing

We have cut down massively on the amount of internet we use, and that’s proven to be a great thing. We no longer spend several hours in front of Netflix every evening. We find other ways to entertain ourselves, like reading our Kindles, and a film is a real treat.

We have cut down binging on Facebook or Instagram and we don’t have as much time in front of our screens. This has given us way more time to get on with the important things – snorkelling, exploring, fixing problems with the boat!

We have found that although we still rely on the internet to help us figure stuff out, and to enable us to work, we aren’t relying on it for entertainment. This has been a great thing about having only limited internet when sailing.

If you’re heading off on longer passages then it might be worth downloading some audiobooks (you can get a month’s free trial with this link) before you leave.

We have found these to be amazing boredom savers while we’re out at sea and everything is running smoothly. We tent to alternate between a good audiobook and reading books on our kindles – you can find our favourite books for sailors here.

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Great Websites and Apps that Need Internet when Sailing

That being said, there are always times when having the internet on our sailboat is a literal life-saver! Although there are alternate ways to get the weather, we really do rely on getting the wind forecast twice a day.

There have also been many times when we’ve made last-minute decisions to change anchorages and internet-based websites and apps have saved the day. We’ve put together a list of our top 12 apps and websites for sailing here and listed below are a few of our go tos!

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Navionics – We have Navionics on our phones and tablets and use it for navigation. It is amazing. And so cheap compared to chart plotter charts!

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Predict Wind – Our go-to app for the wind forecast, we tried windy but didn’t find it as accurate. Apparently, it can differ in different parts of the world, or even different parts of the Med, so try both and see which one works best for you before you stick!

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Blitzortung – We check this website every day alongside the weather. It maps out every lightening strike in the world with astonishing accuracy.

So you can basically track whether a storm is heading your way. It’s been so much more reliable than the weather forecast and we’ve always known when a thunderstorm is approaching!

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No Foreign Land – Here you can read reviews about anchorages and you can map your journey and see the journeys of your friends. Sailors who want to can add where they are, so you can see other boats that you’re sharing an anchorage with!

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Navily – Reviews of anchorages from sailors who have used them. We’ve found it to be pretty accurate most of the time, but don’t let one or two grumpy reviews put you off!

Google Maps – Go to satellite view to get a pretty good idea of the holding in your anchorage!

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Conclusion: How To Get The Internet At Sea

In summary, there are actually many different options for getting internet at sea. Not all of them are easy or cheap but if you are determined to make this lifestyle work, then you will find a way!

And having that spare bit of data for the odd Netflix film every now and again can really brighten a wet and windy evening!

If you found this post useful please consider sharing it, and follow us for more sailing tips! Thank you!

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