Our Hurricane Hunter!

(Below) Two of our founders sailing the prototype for our autonomous research vessel “The Hurricane Hunter” in Kawaihae Harbor, Big Island of Hawaii.

Here’s the problem:

Of the 310 billion-dollar weather disasters in the USA between 1980 and 2021, tropical cyclones (or hurricanes) have caused the most damage: over $1.1 trillion total, with an average cost of $20.5 billion per event. They are also responsible for the highest number of deaths: 6,697 between 1980 and 2021 (NOAA Office For Coastal management https://coast.noaa.gov/states/fast-facts/hurricane-costs.html). One hurricane alone killed over 2,900 people in Puerto Rico in 2017.

Here’s the real question for the world (and for potential investors): what is our $200,000 Hurricane Hunter worth, if the data it provides prevents even one of those $20.5 billion hurricane events, or turns it into a $10 billion hurricane event with half the death toll?

Most of our information on hurricanes comes from NASA’s and NOAA’s Hurricane Hunter airplanes flying at heights of 35,000 to 40,000 feet at a cost of $12-15,000 per hour. This severely limits the amount of observation that our weather scientists can afford, and in turn, limits how much we can learn about hurricanes.

We unashamedly borrowed the name of these agencie’s Hunter airplanes to apply to our Hurricane Hunter sailboat, which is a very different beast. Their craft operate from 10,000 to 35,000 feet altitude over the storms, ours operates at zero feet altitude, on the surface of the ocean, in the middle of the most intense chaos anywhere on Earth.

Because most of our information comes from airplanes flying at 10-35,000 feet, we have almost no sea-level data from the areas the hurricane passes over, except from “drifter bouys” that are deployed by airplane in the path of an already-developed hurricane in the hope that it will pass over one and generate some data.

Neither do we have any data from the areas where the hurricane spawns, which are thousands of miles from shore in mid-ocean. This is because its too costly to send planes or ships out that far on the research budgets our weather agencies have.

As a result, we know very little about what happens between the time a hurricane spawns and the time it reaches its full strength. We don’t know why some hurricanes dissipate and others strengthen and wreak havoc when they come ashore. We’re not certain why they go where they go, or how bad they will be when they get there.

Here’s our solution:

Because of her 18-knot top speed and 12-knot average speed, our fully autonomous Hurricane Hunter is fast enough to chase and catch hurricanes. It will actively gather sea-level data on a hurricane for days or weeks at a time, from thousands of miles out at sea where it spawns, to the time the hurricane goes ashore and dissipates.

There is no other autonomous vessel in the world that can do this.

One Hurricane Hunter will cost the same as 20 hours of hurricane observation from an airplane, and last for years. We believe the more comprehensive understanding of hurricanes that our Hurricane Hunter brings will save hundreds or even thousands of lives per year, and billions of dollars in property damage. And when there isn’t a hurricane in the offing, The Hurricane Hunter doe every kind of standard oceanographic research with the suite of instruments on board, and streams the data back to any shore location in the world via a satellite up-link; so she is working and generating data all the time.

Our Prototype For The Hurricane Hunter Sailing:

If you have questions about our Hurricane Hunter, I’ll be happy to answer them (808-640-1981). If you know someone who might be a good fit for this investment opportunity, please forward this.

With Warm Aloha, Tim and the Hawaiian Ocean Technologies, Inc. family: Susanne, Jack, Lucky, and Rose

PS: Want to invest and help us build this future? You can find the complete Hurricane Hunter investor’s package here.  It includes a 2-page Executive Summary, a 24-page business plan, a 23-slide PowerPoint deck, a 7-page written narrative of “What We’re Doing”, a first and second-year’s sales projections spreadsheet with customer names listed, and an “Expenditures Timeline” spreadsheet that details our costs and timeline for developing the Hurricane Hunter and building 15 of them.