Beverly Hills company claims new device discourages low-life from living on boats.

Beverly Hills company claims new device discourages low-life from living on boats

Barnacles, the bane of seafarers for centuries, are the target of a new start-up company, Cricket Marine Electronics Inc. in Beverly Hills.

The product, called a Cricket, electronically creates a faint resonance on the hull of the boat which discourages barnacles and other sea life.

The market for anti-fouling paint and devices is worth at least $1 billion, said Richard Delaney, vice president of the company.

The previous method of barnacle prevention, a tin-based paint, was banned for most applications last year. It was found to pose ecological dangers because the tin, known as "TBT," leeched into the water around the hull, killing off other marine life as well. People are at risk if they eat fish contaminated by TBT.

Copper-based paints are a legal alternative, but they too are toxic, and environmental groups have been clamoring for their ban. The Environmental Protection Agency has restricted the amount of copper permissible, which has dulled the effectiveness of the paints.

Barnacles are an age-old problem in boating because they slow down a vessel. Unprotected, the hull of a boat can become blanketed with barnacles in two weeks. The barnacles then provide a foothold for other marine life to attach to the boat.

Cricket Marine Electronics is currently lining up distributors, according to Stephen Rabbette, the president and one of its two shareholders. Last week the company signed a contract worth $5 million over five years with a Canadian distributor. Rabbette claimed a number of other distributors are actively interested in carrying the Cricket. By 1992 the company's goal is to have 100 distributors and 800 retailers.

The basic principle behind the Cricket has been known for a decade, but Rabbette said no one else has yet tried to capitalize on that principle. With only 12 volts -- less current than needed by a light bulb -- a slight vibration of the hull is generated through a number of unobtrusive resonators attached to the inside of the hull. Barnacles can not tolerate the vibration, which is not strong enough to create a threat to the structural integrity of the hull.

Although the same principle would apply to any ship, Rabbette has for now targetted pleasure crafts between 21 and 64 feet long. There are roughly 700,000 boats in the U.S. in that size range alone.

The Cricket does not work for ships, but the company is currently working on a design that will. In any case larger ships are presently exempt from the TBT ban. Because these ships tend to spend more time out on the high seas, law makers assumed they pollute harbors less as justification for the exemption.

One factor boding well for the Cricket is of the dearth of alternatives to TBT paints in the marketplace. Boaters can still use copper-based paints which were once the standard in the pre-TBT days, but these copper paints lost out to TBT because they were inferior barnacle zappers, and their toxicity could spell their doom with the appearance of an ecologically sound substitute. As might be guessed, the paint industry is working furiously to develop a better substitute for TBT paints, Rabbette said.

Rabbette does have a patent application pending on the Cricket, but he said he is not going to count on its approval for the company's success. Perhaps with a certain amount of pluck, he claims not to be fearful of imitators. "Competitors would probably give us a boost because it would increase market awareness," he said. With a background in marketing, Rabbette believes these skills and service will see the company through.

Rabette was sales and marketing director for TNT Ipec Europe, a freight company, between 1984 and 1987. He had previously set up the California operations for KIS FRANCE, a maker of key blanks.

Beyond the Cricket Rabbette has ambitious plans for the future. He is already plotting line extensions of the anti-fouling mechanism, including similar devices for fishing and other commercial vessels. More immediately, the company plans to test whether the Cricket works on killing zebra mussels, which have become a major headache for electric utilities on the Great Lakes whose cooling water pipes have become clogged with that nuisance. Because of the economic and ecological concern about zebra mussels, there is a good chance the federal government will underwrite the tests, Rabbette said.

The company's business plan projects $7.4 million of sales and $3.4 million net income by 1993, representing 2.3 percent of the barnacle prevention market. Because Rabbette assumes there will be continuing competition from paint manufacturers, he has priced the Cricket with the cost of existing hull maintenance methods in mind.

The price will range from $795 to $1,862, depending on the size of the craft.

"The environmental issue is a motivation for buying the Cricket, but it will not be the prime one," Rabbette said.

Rabbette has already thought ahead beyond the next few years. Within five years he would like to take the company public.

The company currently has two shareholders, and Rabbette said he thinks it may get by without any additional outside financing. Developing the Cricket cost a few $100,000, Rabbette said.

If barnacle prevention is not enough, the Cricket holds one other advantage, according to Rabbette: it discourages bird droppings. Birds, it seems, have the same aversion to resonating hulls as barnacles.

PHOTO : Rabbette: Zapping pests