Welcome to Future Tides, let's dive in 🐙

1. Interview: NOAA’s system update and the next era of electronic charts

This week, I interviewed Crescent Moegling, the navigation manager for the Northwest and Pacific Islands region at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Based in Seattle, she is a subject matter expert in all things charting and the products and services NOAA provides.

Read takeaways from our conversation about the role of technology in NOAA’s National Charting Plan, which will sunset raster nautical charts, and the agency at large.

2. Funding for climate tech is surging, including opportunities on the water

A reality of innovation graduating from concept to commercialization is funding. And where technology and environmental or climate solutions intersect, venture capital (VC) investments are surging.

Cipher, another recently launched publication with roots in Seattle, reported that almost $30 billion has been invested so far this year into climate tech globally. That’s up from about $6 billion five years ago in 2016. 🤑

One of my colleagues at GeekWire, the Seattle tech news site where I work, dug into these trends specifically in the Pacific Northwest. Her reporting found that climate tech startups in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and British Columbia have raised more than $1 billion since 2020.

Some of the startups she featured have indirect but promising applications to the maritime sector such as batteries, carbon capture and new alternative energies.

Maritime-focused companies in the Pacific Northwest included in this trend are electric outboard maker Pure Watercraft and offshore power producer Columbia Power Technologies (C-Power), the latter is featured in the recent GeekWire article.

3. What if smoked salmon, pinot noir or hops were exported by cargo sailboat?

Ever since reading about the Grain de Sail back in May, the possibilities for a cargo sailboat based out of Puget Sound stayed on my mind.

The 72-foot schooner completed its second transatlantic loop this year carrying wine from France to New York and then transporting coffee and cocoa from the Dominican Republic back to France. Sounds like something out of another era, right?

This kind of innovation reimagines a tried and true technology (sailing along trade routes) in our modern era. The application to luxury food items is notable, as well. The entire trip still takes three months but the promise of wine, chocolate or coffee reaching an end consumer with minimal fuel consumption seems both sincere and strategic.

Sources: I first read about the Grain de Sail on local news site The Brooklyn Eagle. The New York Times recently featured it as well as another New York-based sailboat carrying cargo up and down the Hudson River.

Quote from the captain of the Hudson vessel: “I think there were ways we used to do things that were really right, and we can learn from those. But today’s version is going to look different. And it should look different.”

As the New York Times notes, this is not the first time the idea of cargo sailboats has been revisited and those ventures did not succeed. Perhaps these iterations are bringing us closer to this "old-is-new-again" innovation succeeding.

🗳️Poll: Which story are you most excited to learn more about ?
NOAA's system update
Climate Tech trends
Modern cargo sailboats
More than one
None of them

Hiya!
I hope you had a summer full of good health, time on the water and just-the-right-amount of sun.

Thanks for joining me on this journey (voyage?! must nurse the nautical references). It's as exciting and scary as "they" say.

If you're reading today's newsletter you probably know me, talked about sailing with me, completed my community survey or all of the above. I'm sincerely glad you're here.

You will now receive this newsletter weekly, on Wednesdays starting next week, with news I'm bursting at the seams to share. Future Tides is still very much evolving and as an early reader, you will see the ebbs and flows (I know, but that one is too apropos!).

Bring your curiosity. Ask questions. Tell me what's important to you. This is going to be fun!

Until next week,
Cara