You don’t have to flip the calendar back too far to find an instance of someone falling off a ship.
In late April, off the coast of Cape Cod, a crew member working on the Norwegian Breakaway fell overboard as the cruise liner was returning to Boston from Bermuda. After a 12-hour search involving helicopters, boats and a search plane, the Coast Guard was unable to locate the 26-year-old cook.
A Cambridge startup company is working on a torpedo-shaped device that could help when similar situations arise in the future. Gander Robotics raised $1.1 million last month from investors, began hiring its first employees and set up shop at The Engine, a startup incubator affiliated with MIT.
All that while the company’s two co-founders were finishing up their degrees. Lael Ayala expects to receive her bachelor’s in mechanical engineering from Harvard this month, and Michael Autery an MBA degree from MIT’s business school.
Autery, who served 15 years in the U.S. Navy, said that according to his research, the survival rate for sailors who fall overboard is about 28%, and in the cruise industry it’s even lower: 17%. And one or two people fall off a cruise ship every month, he said.
