Heather Brewer and Paul Bultema hadn’t spent much time thinking about the idea of working on board until the pandemic sent them both home from their tech-industry jobs. They decided to give it a try, and then, after getting a taste of the good life, they decided to seriously go for it.
“People can make all kinds of statements or be naysayers, but you just have to be committed that this can work,” Brewer says. “And it did work.”
Aboard their Nordhavn 43, Gratitude, they wanted to be able to have two simultaneous video streams going no matter where they were in the world, so they copied the setup that a chief scientist at Amazon had while circumnavigating. It was based on KVH’s VSAT equipment, and the hardware cost about $30,000. They also used Wi-Fi hot spots and a cellular system, depending on what they could access from different locations. “On average, over the next two years, we spent about $3,500 on average per month while working full-time from the boat,” Bultema says.
When Starlink became available in 2022, they turned off their previous system and paid $600 for the install. Their monthly costs dropped to $150, and their bandwidth became faster while staying reliable.
“With the satellite, we did spend more on communications than we did on diesel,” Brewer says. “But it allowed us to do what we wanted to do, and it was pretty amazing.”
They are far from alone in realizing just how great life can be as boaters who work or homeschool kids from on board. Two primary forces—the pandemic and the accessibility of Starlink—are driving a surge of boaters giving one or both lifestyles a try. The pandemic normalized working from locations outside the traditional office, while Starlink drastically reduced the costs required to get online from the water. The level of connectivity that used to require thousands of dollars’ worth of domes and other equipment, as well as thousands of dollars a month in service charges, can now be installed and used for hundreds of dollars. Kids can stream whatever they need for school, adults can take video calls with the office, and it all can happen on virtually any size boat.
“Any new boat that’s getting commissioned for cruising is going to have Starlink on board,” says Larry Schildwachter, owner of Emerald Harbor Marine in Seattle. “We add it to boats all the time. It’s becoming almost a standard. It’s a lot like watermakers. Twenty years ago, they were options. Now, we don’t see any serious boats leaving the marina without them.”
Brooke and Braden Palmer, who homeschool their 11- and 9-year-old children from aboard their Nordhavn 55, Mermaid Monster, use Starlink in combination with 5G internet as a backup. “Sometimes if both kids are on a video call at the same time, especially in a congested area like Florida, the hot spot can be a little better with the 5G internet,” Braden says.
At first, they did a book-based homeschooling program because they didn’t know how good internet connectivity would be from the boat. But with the newer setup, they’re able to have dedicated tutors who help the kids with whatever subjects they need, all while Brooke and Braden work from the boat and tend to their 11-month-old child.
“They both have different tutors, and they jump on at the same time via Zoom,” Brooke says. “Usually they’ll wake up, eat breakfast, we’ll do math with them in the morning on the worksheets, and then in the middle of the day we get off the boat and do something like hit a museum so they learn other stuff—they usually do something educational every single day, because we’re always traveling—and then they come back, relax for a minute, and do their tutoring. And they don’t get days off. We do school year-round, including all summer with the tutor.”
Each kid has a separate space to concentrate, either at the galley table or up at the pilothouse table. It’s a setup similar to what a couple who own a Marlow Explorer 70E use to work on board. “My office is in the command bridge. His is in the galley,” says the wife, who asked to remain anonymous. “That way, we have our separate space.”
Her work is in bookkeeping for investment companies, and she keeps up with it just fine when they leave their North Carolina home for a month or longer to go cruising. She uses a laptop with a TV-size monitor, all looped in through Starlink, and sometimes finds herself working even longer hours than she does on land.
“If we’re out on the ocean, my husband drives some, and I drive some, and otherwise I’m sitting here working,” she says. “My husband will come up and say, ‘Are you going to work all day?’ And I’ll say, ‘What time is it?’ And he tells me it’s 4 o’clock. I can sit up here on the bridge and work all day long with a beautiful view, and I’m fine. I take breaks and go play. This is just a very nice office. Not many people have the view that I do.”
Dan Schiappa, who works in cybersecurity from his home on the Gulf Coast of Florida, often heads out for a week or longer with Starlink installed aboard his Aquila 54, RanSomeWhere Else—and simply takes his work with him, without missing a beat.
“I never feel like I’m away from the home office,” Schiappa says. “I’m just as productive there as I am at home, except when I look out the window there, I have a much better view. You can walk around your entire boat with your laptop. You can sit in the cockpit one day, on the sundeck another day. It’s freedom you can’t get anywhere else.”
Brewer says that navigating the technology changes has been one challenge aboard the Nordhavn that she and Bultema share, and navigating landlubber attitudes has been another. While it has become common for people to work from home the past few years, it’s still less common for people to work from a boat—which comes with different types of issues than a house on land.
“You can have all the right technology, and if the weather changes, if you have to move, you’re going to have to drop that conference call,” Brewer says. “If you have to have customer calls, and the boat’s rocking, it’s just not professional. You can’t tell your customers, ‘I’m on the boat and I might lose the connection.’ It’s actually pretty stressful. People don’t understand the amount of work it takes, and that you’re not out there sipping margaritas.”
Lee Wesson, who leaves his home base in Naples, Florida, and heads to the Caribbean from about March or April every year until June or July, works from on board his Aquila 44, Queen of Virginia. He’s a gaming consultant who has real-estate interests and does day trading, and will sometimes work eight to 10 hours a day on the boat with his Starlink setup.
“Prior to Covid, it was harder to do everything electronically. Many times, especially with a financial institution, you have to show up,” he says. “Now, you can pretty much do anything electronically. Just last night, I had to make a deposit in an account, and even the limits have opened up substantively. This is much better.”
Wesson bought the Aquila after landing in the hospital with Covid and double pneumonia. “My doctor said I should’ve been dead before I got there,” he says. “I came out on the other side and had done fairly well in life, and I said, ‘If I’m ever going to do this boat gig, it’s going to be now.’”
He ordered an Aquila 54 with the intent to equip it with Starlink, which he calls “a game changer.” Starlink is just one system that he planned to add; he also ordered FLIR for night vision, custom outdoor cushions, Lumishore lighting for on deck as well as underwater, a JL Audio premium sound system, and custom-made tables for the aft deck and inside.
“I’m 70, and this will be the last boat I buy, so I’m going to get it exactly how I want it and be able to work from anywhere in the world I want to go,” he says. “It’s going to be a hell of a boat.”
That attitude is the same one that Schildwachter says he’s seeing among boaters with all kinds of rides at his yard in Seattle.
“It’s always been a big thing here in the Pacific Northwest. Folks leave in the spring or summer, run the company from the boat and then come back in the fall,” he says. “But the cost made it so that you had to be running a good-size company to justify it. This was a $2,000 to $5,000 monthly bill. Phone bills could be $20,000 a month. They could live with it if they were running a very valuable company, but with Starlink now, I have customers of all kinds doing it. The 35-foot pocket cruisers can have internet access. It opened up the door for so many more folks. It has really changed the game.”
This article was originally published in the March 2024 issue.
