I Almost Built an Electric Boat (And Why I Didn't)
- Kevin Rodgers
- Sep 7
- 3 min read
This year I called my mentor of 39 years and told him I had the boat “bug”. My exact words.
I trusted him with a vision I had had. Why him, well because he knew the 17-year-old me,
kind of like a father knows his son, or a big brother knows his little brother. My mentor is a
captain and owns a yacht. So, I knew I would have his ear when I mentioned a boat. His
immediate response to me was DON’T DO IT! I think the other reason I think I only told him
was subconsciously I knew he would immediately be the voice of reason. He did not let me
down.
He knew I could do it. He had watched me will myself into a few corners over the course of
my life. He had cautioned me many times. Sometimes I was successful at the very thing he
said DON’T DO! Then other times I crashed and burned, and he helped put the fire out
and put ointment on my wounds. So, he knew I had made up my mind, and he knew the
assignment in our debate. Then he said, Kevin have you ever stopped to think if you are
wrong in your boat building efforts you could drown?
Pause...
My most honest and truthful answer to him was, “No. I hadn’t thought about that possibility”.
Yeah... That part.
See, I'd been thinking about propulsion systems, battery configurations, hull designs and I was
thinking about flying over waves and the power and freedom and not the COST that must
be PAID to do it safely. I'd been thinking like an entrepreneur. Build, don’t buy, identify
opportunities, execute, and capitalize. I HAD NOT been thinking about the NATURE of the
North Atlantic or Pacific. About waves that would feel like a storm to inferiorly built boat.
Yeah, I was going to build an electric boat alright...
That conversation made me start "counting the cost". The real cost. I began to research differently.
I started researching companies and people that lost their dreams, investments, and in some cases,
their very lives. This is not the first thought you have when you get the “vision” of yourself on a boat
moving across the ocean. Like flying in a plane. We think of getting from point a to point b...
fast. Not what if between point a and point b something fails.
Being an ASU Student in the College of Global Futures and a Sustainability Major minoring
in Project Management (BA) Fall 26’. The excitement around any tech and sustainable
innovation is just the way of life around here. My excitement around marine transport
exposed me to the environmental and energy issues that mount into “wicked problems” as
they begin to scale.
At ASU, in the first Systems Thinking Course I took as a sustainability major, I was taught how
to identify a “wickedproblem”. It is not an ordinary problem you can solve with linear thinking,
because a wicked problem is so complex, with many players and variables. Here’s the crazy part
about wicked problems... they resist traditional solutions meaning when you fix one
problem within the wicked problem, more problems actually arise.
But here’s what’s most important to remember about solving a wicked problem... There is
wicked-academic and wicked-real. Academic wicked problems don't kill you. Marine
engineering failures do. Boats sink. People drown. This isn't a hobby, it's a “wicked
engineering problem” that requires and non-traditional approach to find probable
solutions. Even the smallest little mistake can = catastrophic failure 50 miles offshore in 4-
5 ft waves. This publication is one of the examples of my personal shift from builder to
researcher.
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