Three weeks ago we wrote that Starlink had no cruiser-shaped plan on the menu. Well, there is one now. On 27 August Starlink emailed a bunch of boaties about a new plan called Personal Maritime, and within a week the cruising groups had gone from "they've killed us" to "hang on, this might actually be alright". It fixes the thing everyone was cross about. It also comes with a price hike hiding in the fine print, and that one lands on 27 September, which is about when half the Fiji fleet starts thinking about the run south.
So here's what the plan is, what it costs, and how we'd read it for a boat doing the New Zealand–Fiji circuit. If you haven't read the background, start with what changed in August and the workarounds we wrote up. This post assumes you know what the 30-day clock is.
Everything below is accurate as at 15 September 2026 and quoted in US dollars. Starlink has changed this plan once already since it launched. Check your own account before you cancel anything.
What Personal Maritime actually is
The plain version: US$185 a month, unlimited data anywhere in the world as long as you're within 12 nautical miles of a coastline, and no 30-day international clock. That last bit is the whole point. You can sit in Fiji for five months, hop to Tonga, come back, go on to Vanuatu, and the account doesn't care where it was registered.
The rest of the terms, as they stand today:
- Boats up to 60 ft length overall. When the plan launched it said 40 ft, which ruled out most of the fleet and caused a proper stink. On 4 September Starlink lifted it to 60 ft. Length is judged off your registration paperwork, not a tape measure, so bowsprits and davits don't count against you.
- Personal, recreational boats only. No charter, no commercial fishing, no ferries, and the terms use the word "yachts" in the excluded list, which we read as "superyachts" given the 60 ft cap. If you run charters off the boat, this isn't your plan.
- Water use only. The terms say use on land is prohibited. Nobody we've seen has a straight answer yet on what that means for a boat on the hard, or in a cyclone pit, for three months. More on that below.
- Beyond 12 nm you pay by the gig. Ocean Mode, at US$6 per GB, from day one on this plan.
- The 30-day clock is gone "except in extremely rare cases when required by local regulations". We don't know which countries those are. Nobody does yet.
How you get on it
It's not a button in the app. You put in a support ticket with the vessel name, flag state, length overall, a unique ID (hull identification number, MMSI or call sign) and a copy of the registration certificate. Starlink checks the paperwork and switches the plan. Reports from people who've done it range from "sorted in a day" to "still waiting", and a few boats over the old 40 ft line were approved before the 60 ft change was even announced, so the enforcement is a bit ad hoc. Have the documents scanned and ready before you open the ticket, because a ticket that bounces for missing paperwork goes to the back of the queue.
One report we'd flag: apparently you can't drop a Personal Maritime account into standby the way you can with Roam, and going back onto the plan after leaving it may mean sending the documents again. If your pattern is "pause it over the off-season", check that with support before you commit.
The $6 a gig catch
Ocean Mode is the toggle that lets a Roam Unlimited dish keep working past 12 nm. Starlink formalised it in mid-2025 at US$2 per GB, and for a weather-and-messages passage it was cheap. Two dollars a gig is over. From 27 September 2026, Ocean Mode on Roam Unlimited goes to US$6 per GB, and on Personal Maritime it's $6 from the start. That's a threefold hike dropped quietly into the same announcement as the plan everyone wanted, which is a very Starlink way of doing business.
Two practical bits. First, Ocean Mode doesn't switch itself off when you come back inside 12 nm. You turn it off in the app, or you keep paying by the gig at anchor. Put it on the arrival checklist next to the Q flag. Second, Ocean Mode data runs at higher network priority than ordinary Roam, so when it's on you'll notice the dish is quicker. That's nice. It's also how 10 GB disappears on a night watch.
The three plans, side by side
| Plan | Price (USD) | Inside 12 nm | Beyond 12 nm | The 30-day clock | Ashore |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Roam Unlimited | ~$95–165/mo, depends on registered country | Unlimited in home country; 30 days per visit elsewhere | Ocean Mode, $6/GB from 27 Sep | Yes | Yes |
| Personal Maritime | $185/mo | Unlimited, worldwide | Ocean Mode, $6/GB | No | Not allowed |
| Global Priority | $250/mo for 50GB, up to $650 for 500GB | Metered block, worldwide | Same block, worldwide | No | Yes |
Read across the rows and the shape is clear. Roam is still the cheapest if you live in one country. Personal Maritime is the plan for a boat that moves between countries and stays near land. Global Priority is the plan for long ocean legs and for anyone who also needs the dish at the bach.
The maths for a Pacific season
The 12 nm line is the thing to think about, because the Pacific is mostly water that's more than 12 nm from anything.
Around Fiji. Nearly all of the cruising ground is inside 12 nm of some bit of reef or island. The odd hop between groups, Suva across to Kadavu say, or out to the Lau, pokes past the line for a few hours. Call it a gig or two over a season if you leave Ocean Mode on for those legs, and nothing at all if you don't bother. Same story in Tonga's Vava'u and Ha'apai groups, and in Vanuatu once you're in.
Fiji to Tonga, or Fiji to Vanuatu. Two to three days of open water. Weather files, a PredictWind route or two, messages home, one video call: we'd budget 1 to 1.5 GB a day for that kind of use. So 3 to 5 GB, $20 to $30. Fine.
New Zealand to Fiji, or back. About 1,100 nautical miles, 7 to 10 days, essentially all of it beyond 12 nm. Weather-and-messages use comes to roughly 10 GB, which is $60. A crew that streams on night watch can run through 5 GB a day, which is 40 GB and $240. And here's the number that matters: $185 for the plan plus about 11 GB of Ocean Mode is $250, which is exactly what a Global Priority month costs, and that month gives you 50 GB anywhere, ashore included. So if the passage month is going to burn more than a dozen gigs, swap to Global Priority for that month and swap back after. Whether Starlink lets you flick between Personal Maritime and Priority freely, or makes you re-send the paperwork each time, is the bit we'd confirm on the support ticket before relying on it.
Against what you were paying. Roam Unlimited in this part of the world ran roughly $95 to $165 depending on where the account lived. Personal Maritime is $20 to $90 a month more than that, and in return the whole 30-day admin problem goes away. For a boat that was going to buy one or two Priority months a season to stay legal, it's a wash or a saving. For a boat that never left its registered country, it's a pay rise for nothing, so stay on Roam.
The bit nobody can answer yet: the off-season
Plenty of us leave the boat somewhere for cyclone season. On the hard at Vuda, in a pit, in a marina in Whangārei. The terms say land use is prohibited, and a boat on the hardstand is, technically, on land. A boat in a marina berth is on the water, but is it "cruising"? Starlink hasn't said. Our reading is that they wrote "no land use" to stop people taking the dish to the campervan, not to catch a hauled-out boat streaming the cricket, but a reading isn't a rule. If you want the dish live while the boat's laid up, ask support in writing and keep the answer. If they say no, Roam Unlimited in the boat's home country covers that stretch, and you move back to Personal Maritime when you splash. Assuming the re-documenting thing above doesn't bite.
Who it suits, and who it doesn't
It suits a boat under 60 ft on the papers, privately owned, that spends its season moving between countries and mostly within sight of land. That's most of the NZ–Fiji–Tonga–Vanuatu fleet. It's also the first plan Starlink has offered that was clearly written with us in mind, and the 40-to-60 ft change inside a week suggests they're actually listening, which is new.
It doesn't suit anything over 60 ft, anything commercial or doing charters, anyone who also wants the dish ashore between seasons, and any boat planning long ocean legs with a data-hungry crew, because $6 a gig adds up faster than you'd think. For the last group Global Priority is the honest answer, and for the big boats the only answer is the maritime plans that cost real money.
What we'd do for a boat like ours
Mā Tori is a 40-footer, so she'd have qualified even under the first version of the rule. For a season like our last four, we'd put her on Personal Maritime for the Fiji months, keep a Fijian SIM in the router as the backup layer we already recommend, and treat the passage south as its own decision: weather-only crew, stay on the plan and wear the $60; crew who want their shows, buy the Priority month. We wouldn't cancel Roam until the Personal Maritime ticket was approved, because a boat with no plan at all in the middle of a season is the one outcome worse than the 30-day clock.
And we'd keep the registered country sensible. The plan removes the international clock, but the account still has a home, and Starlink still prices by geography. That advice hasn't changed.
The short version
Personal Maritime is US$185 a month, unlimited data within 12 nm of any coast, no 30-day clock, for private boats up to 60 ft, applied for by support ticket with the registration papers. It's the plan cruisers asked for, near enough. The sting is Ocean Mode going to $6 a gig on 27 September, on this plan and on Roam, which makes a long passage cost real money and pushes heavy-data crews to a Global Priority month instead. The off-season and the land-use rule are still unanswered. Get the ticket in, keep Roam until it's approved, and turn Ocean Mode off when you drop the pick.
Keep reading: the background is in Starlink's new rules for cruising sailors, and the season strategy in Starlink 30-day rule workarounds. Getting position reports off the boat is a separate job from getting online, so see connecting a PredictWind tracker to Starlink. And for what else the fleet is talking about this month, there's our September 2026 round-up.