WaterBuoy - Miniature Flotation Device, Inflatable Cork Keyring for Boat & Fishing
Posted on June 25, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized
Never lose anything overboard again! As it was featured on BBC’s Dragons’ Den young entrepreneur James Halliburton is bringing an innovative solution for boaters and fishermen who are worried about losing valuable items overboard. It’s his first product in a family of automatic flotation devices aimed to help in recovering your keys, rod, mobile phone, camera, PDA, binoculars, GPS unit or anything else that you drop into the water or falls overboard.
Waterbuoy is a must-have inflatable safety gadget for all your portable fishing gear and valuables on your boat. Being as small as a regular key ring, Waterbuoy features intelligent floatation technology to stop that sinking feeling in its tracks.
Waterbuoy is a tiny floating recovery device that combines a miniature gas tank with a unique trigger mechanism, a bright orange balloon and a flashing LED light. The gas inflates the balloon within seconds on immersion in water and the submerged item is pulled up to the water’s surface. This means that your valuables won’t drift too far or sink too deep before they resurface.
Statistics state over 80% of items lost overboard are lost in less than perfect light. When dropped into the water, Waterbuoy becomes a flashing beacon aiding retrieval at night due to built-in LED light that switches on and keeps flashing for more than 24 hours. Such emergency flashing light makes it visible from up to 250 metres away in the dark, so you can even get your valuables back at night.
Small as it is the Waterbuoy is very strong and will lift items up to 1KG of dry weight, making it useful for more than just keys or fishing rod. Anything — GPS units, cellular phones, cameras — can be stored in a dry bag attached to the Waterbuoy’s snap-on hook for safe retrieval. If your item is heavier than 1KG you can attach two or more Waterbuoys.
With a special high strength balloon and quality seals, Waterbuoy retains its pressure and stays afloat for up to 24 hours. This gives you plenty of time to locate and retrieve your goods in any weather conditions. The toughened balloon inflates to the size of a melon making it very easy to grab one-handed and retrieve without fear of it bursting.
But you won’t want the Waterbuoy going off if you get a bit of rain on it. During exhaustive trials the Waterbuoy was continually splash tested for 1 month, it was then dropped in a tank of water and it worked perfectly.
Water-buoy is the result of two years of intensive engineering development that has led to the patenting of some very clever new technology. Seatriever (producer of Waterbuoy) is currently using this technology to scale the concept into a multitude of new markets and applications. So look out for more and more Waterbuoy-branded devices helping to save all kinds of objects you’d rather not send to a watery grave.
But what happened on the Den’s show? Dragons Theo Paphitis and Peter Jones decided that invention is worth floating and agreed to invest GBP 100,000 each for a combined equity stake of 20%. Their interest was piqued not only by the current Waterbuoy product, but also by the possibility of designing larger versions that would be able to help keep pets, people and even entire boats afloat.
[via water-buoy.com]
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bimini tops…
Next your going to tell us that the same thing happened years before when you, a buddy and his brother in law (call them call them Tom and Wayne to protect the innocent) were fishing and Tom s pole fell off his lap….
My dad will surely love the Miniature Flotation Device! He really loves to go fishing!