MINTAKA

Designed on a sailboat. Made in the USA

Mintaka Innovations is one of Jerry Barber’s latest entrepreneurial endeavors, conceived while exploring the Caribbean with his wife, Susan, onboard their Lagoon 440 catamaran, Vida Dulce. Their travel adventures are chronicled in their blog www.sailblogs.com/member/vidadulce/

Being safety conscious, they installed a number of safety related equipment on-board prior to starting their Caribbean adventure in late 2010. Weather being a large component of safety, this equipment included an expensive aneroid barometer. One thing they quickly found was that since the barometer is useful only at a moment of time in a specific place, they rarely referenced it other than to create ship’s log entries while on passage. And they were never sure of the accuracy of their readings. What is needed is accurate atmospheric pressure readings over time and with known locations (GPS lat / long) so that pressures and pressure tendency codes can be easily compared with weather forecast charts.

The Mintaka DUO™, the first of the Mintaka electronic dual-sensor precision barograph line, was introduced in 2014. Since then, the National Weather Service Voluntary Observing Ship Program has purchased them for installation on member ships, including cruise ships, cargo vessels and research vessels. These observations are collated and used in the weather forecasts all mariners now rely upon.

The Mintaka product line are largely Seattle-area based products; circuit board assembly is done by a company located on Seattle’s ship canal, the enclosures are manufactured by company located north of Seattle, and the Barbers personally performed product assembly and commissioning in Seattle until early 2019. This step is now performed by the Barbers in Sedona, AZ. They are a made in the USA precision instruments.

Mintaka Innovations is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Barber Creations, LLC.

For Additional Information About Mintaka’s Inventors click here.