Sumara of Weymouth

Sunday 11th January 2026

Reading Time: 5 Minutes

I’m not liking this thought that is rising inside my head. I need someone to bash some sense into me. This is what is happening.

I have been thinking about setting up my satellite phone ready for my expedition to Greenland. To make it work as a phone is simple enough, but to download Grib* weather files and ice charts it all gets a bit more complicated. Sadly Microsoft automatically send through computer updates for the connected laptop and it seems it is impossible to stop them. This is a big problem when using a satellite phone because the amount of data that they send jams everything up.

To solve the problem there is a £585 (Gulp!) “Red Box” that you can fit to filter out the updates. In 2022 I got away without needing to buy one by using a really old Toshiba laptop still using Windows XP which was no longer updated by Microsoft. That computer has now packed up so I need to investigate buying the rather costly box.

While I was looking up the phone number for Mailasail, who supply the boxes and who I use to set up the satellite phone, a little advert popped up on my screen saying “Starlink Mini” only £159 at Currys.

So I started thinking “Blimey that’s cheap” and tried to forgot about it because I don’t particularly want to add more complexity to the good ship. However, the thought hung around. I found myself starting to justify getting Starlink thus:

I thought about those sailors who proudly sail without an engine but then call up a boat with an engine to tow them into all the harbours.

It would be a bit like me calling up a nearby boat on the VHF to see if they had any up-to-date weather info from their Starlink.

Luckily I began to learn that Starlink uses up a lot of power and as I only have one old fashioned 100 amp hour general service battery it probably wouldn’t work for me. Phew, no point in buying one if I can’t even power it.

Then another bloody advert popped up on my screen showing off a portable lithium battery thingumabob. I did a few sums and reckoned I could run Starlink for almost 24 hours on a full battery charge. That would be a lot of weather and ice charts!

So the lack of power excuse went out of the window leaving me in a quandary. So for weather at sea should I:

1. Spend £585 on a Red Box and then struggle with ancient technology downloading Grib Files* and Ice Charts over the sat phone.
2. Try to ignore my various reservations and buy a Starlink plus a suitable portable battery bank. I would still need the sat phone activated for coms with the Greenpos* system.
3. Just use the sat phone as a phone to connect with a friend for weather and ice routing.
4. Stick with the old fashioned weather forecasting of Buys Ballot’s Law*, tapping the barometer, looking at the clouds, taking a gamble with the ice and basically hoping for the best.

If I think back on previous long sea crossings, I often just used the best forecast before setting off and got on with it. We did get clobbered a few times. However, receiving Windy* forecasts for weather systems that are ten days ahead can just cause unnecessary worry spoiling a lovely sail.

On the other hand, is it now considered unseamanlike to set off without the means of obtaining an outside forecast?

I really do want to keep things simple!

Please try to stop me from deviating from my Simple Sailor approach.

But downloading weather and ice data at sea is soooo tempting!

Technical Details

* GRIB files are a concise data format commonly used to receive weather forecast data over satellite phones.

*Buys Ballot’s Law: Back to the wind, and the low pressure is on the left in the Northern hemisphere.

*Greenpos – Sailors are obliged to report in to the Greenlandic Coastguard every six hours.

*Windy is a weather app.

NEWSFLASH – Sunday 11th January 2026

We had dinner with our neighbours yesterday and I mentioned my dilemma. Our host who seemed very knowledgeable on IT stuff asked “Why don’t you just use Linux? What about using a Raspberry pi?”

YIKES HELP!!!!