Once I got back home form the trip the real hard work began. How to produce an internet livestream from a small craft offshore. Our original plan before seeing the boat was have three people talent, camera and someone running one of our Liverstream box’s. So how to get the internet connection? My first thought was to set up a satellite connection somewhere on the boats tower. After looking around a bit I found several options that where designed for marine use most intended for larger yachts or smaller ships. Far to large to mount on the tower of a rescue boat. But a couple of the smaller ones seemed like they could fit. There were only two problems, they were only sold not rented, and hooking them up was not as simple as plugging stuff in. Even if we could justify the purchase it needed to be installed by an electrician, not something we could do within our loading time of two hours before we sail.
One thing I discovered is there is a surprising lack of small mobile satellite connections available with enough bandwidth to stream from. The smallest I found was built into a SUV as a mobile studio. BUT there was one portable option we had yet to really look into, cellular backpacks. At first they seemed like one would be perfect, but I had originally ruled them out since we would be so far off shore. So after a few calls with LiveU a provider of cellpacks we decided to give it a try on the next test coming up in a few weeks. They would send us a unit and an extender which we hoped that along with the shape of Charleston bay would get us just enough of a signal to get a stream. The best part was that the LiveU unit doesn’t just provide an internet connection, but is a whole streaming unit itself. No need for the Livestream box or operator from the boat. So it was back off to Charleston for our first test.