Richard Jenkins is the first to see it—a sailing robot, which has been blowing our way for a month. We’re in a small motorboat 7 miles out at sea, just north of Oahu’s windward shore. Dylan Owens gets the next good glimpse. “I see the wing,” he exclaims, “and the tail!”

Jenkins and Owens are the engineering duo behind Saildrone, which in the words of their website is “a wind-powered autonomous surface vehicle.” On October 1, the 19-foot craft was set loose in the San Francisco Bay with a simple command lodged in its electronic brain: Sail to Hawaii.