Oceans of connection

One of my enduring memories of sailing with my dad as a child in the 1970s isn’t actually about sailing or the sea or where we sailed to at all. Instead, it centres on the thrill of a moment of remote contact when, as a treat, my dad set up a ship-to-shore call with my mum so I could say hello from wherever we were on the waters off the south coast of the UK.

It doesn’t sound much, but remember that this was pre-smartphones, pre-data, pre-any sort of mobile communications that today we take for granted. It involved calling up one of the coast stations on the VHF radio, who would then connect to the telephone line and enable us to have a clunky conversation with home.

By the time I started working on superyachts in the early 1990s, things had advanced somewhat – it would still be a couple of years before I got my first mobile phone, not that there was any reception once you were away from harbour and coast anyway – but communications on board were still far from straightforward. Satellite communications meant it was possible to send and receive faxes (hard copy email, for those who weren’t around then!) and to make calls when you were in the lower latitudes, albeit at an eye-watering $10 per minute, which seemed a fortune back then

In many ways, you could argue that those were the days when yachting at all levels was at its purest, when non-critical comms with the outside world were limited and when time on board really was an escape from the outside world – the perfect moment to unwind or to spend quality time with family or friends.

Inevitably, the march of technology powered on, and in many cases superyachts were the first platforms to embrace these new ways of keeping in contact and – in more recent years – of accessing entertainment and other elements that we take for granted ashore. Media servers replaced good old-fashioned VHS video tapes and DVDs. High-throughput satellites followed quickly on the heels of the advent of smartphones to enable decent data connections as well as voice calls – albeit at a steep price – which in turn meant staying connected through social media. Faxes had long since gone the way of the dinosaur, replaced by email that could now be sent with attachments thanks to data bandwidth available on satellite uplinks.

Now, throughput is everything. Media servers and terrestrial TV antennas are being jointly replaced by streaming services as superyachts strive to recreate the experience we all have at home on board. Data throughput demands are high, as social media and video content channels and internet connectivity set ever closer to the core of everything we do. New generations of satellites are going up to meet the demands of new generations of people for ultrafast internet anywhere in the world, with traditional providers such as Inmarsat, Intellian, Intelsat and SES introducing spot-beam technology that offers fast data speeds to yachts. More recent developments include Starlink and One Web criss-crossing our night skies with thousands of low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations, which offer similarly fast speeds and a fibre-like experience.

“We are witnessing an authentic revolution in the world of connectivity, with systems evolving very rapidly: new technologies, new players with LEO satellite systems,” says Paolo Tagliapietra, manager of the Connectivity and Communications Solutions business unit at Italian AV/IT specialist Videoworks. “The stated goal is to have a bandwidth capacity similar to the one we are used to on the mainland. Today’s boat owners want to be able to access platforms such as Netflix with the same speed and image quality they are used to having in their living room at home.”

It’s easy to lament the loss of the innocent early days, where contact was face-to-face, where being out on the water meant you, the sea, the yacht and no distractions, where the surprise of a ship-to-shore call stayed in your memory for decades after. But to pine for simpler days would also be to miss the extraordinary benefits that advanced communications technologies have delivered.

Superyachts were some of the first to adopt advances in satcomms, no matter what the initial costs or the monthly fees, and have been among the key drivers for the development of new technologies and new services. That in turn has meant that owners and charterers and friends and guests can use specially developed conferencing tools to keep in touch with – and in some cases to run – their businesses from their yachts. That means they can spend more time on board, and that means they can spend more time with family.

What’s more, the family, and friends and guests can keep up with their friends ashore, their studies, and their favourite box sets no matter where they are in the world. It means they are more connected than ever, but also more engaged with where they are because they can share their experiences with friends networks and the wider world. They can use the internet as their local knowledge guide when they are curious about new destinations the yacht is taking them, and they can inspire others not only with their travel adventures but also with their interactions with wildlife, with local cultures and with the majestic power of the oceans.

And finally, it means that scientists and conservationists and marine biologists and humanitarian organisations and myriad more can use yachts as extensions of their platforms, reporting live from location or sharing data, photos and videos in real time from ongoing citizen science projects.

I have fond memories of those early days of sailing, where everything seemed so simple and so pure. But I also believe that modern technologies, satellite communications and near-coast high-speed mobile data networks have helped transform superyachting not negatively – because no one interacts with each other or the sensational environments they find themselves in – but positively, because it helps people connect, and it helps highlight the wonderful, extraordinary, fragile world we live in and augment the wonderful, extraordinary experiences that superyachts can offer.