Not sure why you got downvoted. As a sailor, I'm a huge fan of any service that can get more bandwidth to the oceans. Those who have not been to sea for their employment cannot imagine how lonesome it can be.

I downvoted because it wasn't a substantive comment.

Starlink is indeed an interesting technical solution to the problem of connecting sailors to their families. I've only been on short cruises, and I found those to be incredibly isolating. The experience was completely unlike camping, for example. At least there, you're under your own power, and returning to civilization is a matter of walking back in the direction from which you came. At sea, on a big ship, you are stuck in the middle of nowhere, powerless to go anywhere, an empty expanse of fathomless water in every direction. I found the experience simultaneously intense and depressing, and I can't imagine how sailors manage it even in the digital age.

SpaceX is currently seeking permission to test Starlink on their own marine vessels:

https://old.reddit.com/r/Starlink/comments/itl1tk/spacex_ask...

Or good old short-wave radio. Much lower bandwidth, of course, but good enough for a short message, with a delay for delivery, like an SMS.

Is Starlink going to cover oceans where there are just a few boats?

Not currently since it's single hop bounces from ground to sat to ground. Eventually though they want to mesh the satellites with a laser network which will allow peering between satellites. Once that is done they will be able to cover the entire globe.

It depends on how far you are. With the current system at least 1 Satellite needs to be close enough to a ground station. So that means from your boat up to the sky, and from there to land.

It has also been suggested that at strategic locations you could have swimming ground stations in order to cover a pretty large area.

Eventually however it will cover everything as the satellites will communicate directly between each other with lasers.

Where "close enough" means that you would need to be within about one-and-a-half-thousand kilometres of a ground station (using words not numbers because it's a bit hand-wavy).