The way Ed Kearney sees things, a new era of foiling technology has arrived. He hopes to lead it as CEO of the California startup Boundary Layer Technologies.

Military applications were the first era, in the 1970s, with foiling torpedo boats. The second era started about a decade ago, when America’s Cup teams invested heavily in foil engineering. Today, the idea is to make the technology accessible to everyone—with products like the Valo Hyperfoil, a personal watercraft that combines electric propulsion with foils for speeds approaching 35 knots.

“The silence is bizarre and exciting,” Kearney says. “You don’t even hear the water sloshing. It’s a very quiet hum of the electric motor, and then there’s the wind and the birds chirping.”

Boundary Layer Technologies was founded in 2019 and has worked on a few marine-specific concepts, including a micro container ship that could replace air freight, and a 150-passenger ferry. The costs for those prototypes were quite high for a startup, so in late 2022, the company pivoted to the recreational product. It built a prototype of the personal watercraft, then used lessons learned to create the updated design that was unveiled at the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show in October 2023.

“Most people we spoke to—whether they were boatbuilders or yacht crew—said: ‘I think I’ve seen that thing. That’s cool,’” Kearney says.

The price point for the Valo Hyperfoil ($59,000) is more than double most traditional PWCs, but Kearney says that the company already has about 60 orders. A limited production run is expected to begin this year, with the main production run starting in 2025.

“We’ve had people ask us the dimensions to see if they will fit in the garage of their yacht,” he says. “We have customers who live on lakes. We have customers out here on San Francisco Bay. All of them like technology and want to be part of this new era in boating.”

Projected range for the Valo Hyperfoil is more than 60 nautical miles at an average speed of 27 knots. Put another way, it should run for close to two and a half hours at about 21 knots. A three-hour charging session brings the battery back to full.

And the Valo Hyperfoil can be towed or stowed in traditional ways. “You can put it in a garage or on the deck of a yacht,” Kearney says. “The foils fully retract, and the back one has a tilt system like an outboard engine.”

Keeping Balance

Ask any America’s Cup skipper, and they’ll tell you that a foiling craft can be hard to balance. That’s why the Valo Hyperfoil has a control system called Skyride that uses advanced algorithms to adjust the foils hundreds of times every second. “The control system is very hard to build, and that’s one thing we are really good at as a company,” says Ed Kearney, CEO of Boundary Layer Technologies.

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There’s a revolution underway in the sport of sailing, and it can be summed up in one simple word: foiling.

More specifically, we’re talking about hydrofoils, the winglike appendages mounted beneath the hull of a vessel that, at a certain speed, lift the hull clear of the water. When this happens, the foiling sailboats can reach speeds two or even three times faster than possible in “displacement” mode.

And sailboats are just one element of the foiling revolution: Surfboards, paddleboards and powerboats are also getting in on the act.

An Italian naval architect named Enrico Forlanini is credited with developing the first waterborne hydrofoils, which he affixed to a 60 hp, airscrew-driven craft that topped off at 36.9 knots back in 1906. In the century that followed, a series of would-be inventors took a swing at the concept with varying degrees of success. Foiling sailboats finally ascended into the mainstream during the 2013 America’s Cup, when Oracle Team USA beat Emirates Team New Zealand in a match between foiling 72-foot catamarans (the Cup has been contested in foiling cats ever since).

Surprisingly enough, my first foiling experience happened some three decades ago, aboard something called a Hobie TriFoiler, from the popular manufacturer of Hobie surfboards, beach cats and kayaks. The TriFoiler, basically a 22-foot trimaran with a central pod and a pair of mainsails stepped on the twin outriggers, was invented by a fanatical California engineer named Greg Ketterman. The sail controls were laid out just forward of the tiny airplane-style cockpit; you steered with foot pedals. It was so ridiculously easy that even a gremmie like me had the thing foiling within moments of getting in and reaching off.

But after the initial thrill, it was actually kind of boring. Which, I believe, is why it went out of production soon after. The TriFoiler was, unfortunately, way ahead of its time.

Such was the extent of my personal foiling experience until this past summer, when a new class of foiling monohull skiffs called Persico 69Fs rolled into my home waters for a series of races among youth squads in the class’s inaugural season. I got an invitation to take a spin.

After donning my helmet, wetsuit and life jacket, I was handed the helm with a pair of skilled young sailors on board. At 25 knots, we were towed into Narragansett Bay behind a powerful RIB, foiling all the way. It was terrifying. And a preview of coming attractions.

Once the tow dropped us, the sails went up and we bore off. I skied the tiller extension while scrambling out onto the hiking racks. Which sent us off on a screaming reach. Which flipped the 22-foot-7-inch carbon rocket ship.

Twenty seconds into foiling, and I’d capsized the bloody thing. How embarrassing.

The kids, bless them, were kind and patient. We got the whole shooting match, including ourselves, back upright and tried again. The mainsail trimmer sheeted it home, we started to accelerate, and he said: “Here we go! You’re up. You’re flying!” Indeed, we were.

Hard on the breeze in the 12-knot southwesterly, things unfolded quickly. Spray was flying, and I took more than one solid wave to the kisser. I was mostly too frightened to concentrate on anything but driving, but I did glance at the speedo once: 17.4 knots. (I felt pretty chuffed until later learning a 69F’s top speed is 34 knots. Ugh.)

However, I guess I’d proved the point: With a couple of sailors who know what they’re doing, foiling is for everyone. From now on, just call me Mr. Foiler.

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Emirates Team New Zealand’s Chase Zero is the world’s first hydrogen-powered and hydrofoil-equipped catamaran. The team designed and built it as a prototype chase boat for the 37th America’s Cup. The high-performance foiler is held aloft by two connected hydrofoils that extend downward via struts from the hull at midship, and by a rudder and static elevator assembly. The boat’s autopilot handles flight control by articulating the flaps on the trailing edges of the hydrofoils and by trimming the rudder’s rake angle.

The team’s biggest challenge in building Chase Zero was time lost to pandemic-driven quarantines and supply-chain disruptions. It applied its 29-year history of innovation to those problems. “In our day job of competing for the America’s Cup, we have to be able to turn concepts into working engineering solutions extremely quickly,” says Dan Bernasconi, the team’s head of design. “We have developed tools and processes that allow for this rapid development, and we have a very solid engineering team.”

Under the Hood

Chase Zero’s cruising speed is 35 knots, but it can reportedly do 50-plus knots. Thrust is generated by twin 80 kW Toyota prototype fuel cells and twin electric motors (one per hull) that spin Mercury Bravo I propellers. Each fuel cell creates DC power that’s either consumed by the motors or banked in lithium- ion batteries. Chase Zero’s daily working range is 100 nautical miles, and it emits only water. While Emirates Team New Zealand isn’t a mass-production boatbuilder, its head of design says the team may supply the design to other America’s Cup teams or to a production builder.

Take the next step: emirates-team-new-zealand.americascup.com

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The Candela C-7 is a foiling boat that employs computer-controlled hydrofoils and an electric outboard for a smooth, nearly silent ride. C-7s are propelled by Candela’s proprietary outboards. The C-7’s foil-control system leverages ultrasonic sensors, accelerometers, GPS receivers and gyroscopes to trim the foils 100 times per second. Owners can reportedly achieve 30-knot top speeds or a range of 50 nautical miles at a 22-knot cruising speed.  

Whom It’s For: Candela C-7s are for boaters who want electric and foiling technologies in a traditional-looking vessel.  

Picture This: A beautiful afternoon on the San Francisco Bay finds you cruising under the Golden Gate Bridge to Point Diablo. A gathering sea breeze opposes an ebb tide en route home, but your C-7’s flight-control system ensures a smooth ride.  

Take the next step: candela.com

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Candela, the Swedish firm that builds foiling electric boats, just raised about $27 million from investors led by EQT Ventures to triple its research and development, invest in production automation, and scale up production and sales worldwide.

Candela’s boats have computer-guided underwater hydrofoils that, according to the company, reduce energy consumption by 80 percent compared to conventional planing boats. The company says it has led electric boat sales in Europe since 2019 with its foiling C-7 boat. Its newer C-8 day cruiser reportedly received nearly 100 orders within three months of launching.

“We’ve shown that our hydrofoil tech is the key to make electric boats commercially viable,” Gustav Hasselskog, CEO of Candela, stated in a press release. “The investment from EQT Ventures will allow us to double down on our mission to speed up the transition to fossil fuel-free lakes and oceans. It took us four years to develop the technology and two more years to master it. Now we are ready to scale up fast.”

What else is Candela working on? Its P-30 ferry, which is reportedly the world’s first electric hydrofoil passenger vessel. Look for it to start carrying people near Stockholm in 2023.

Take the next step: go to candela.com

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Back in August, we told you to be on the lookout for U.S. sales to begin soon for the Manta5 Hydrofoiler XE-1 bicycle.

And now, the time has come. Presales to U.S. residents just opened, with an asking price of $7,490 (slightly higher than the predicted price of $6,895 that we originally reported).

The Hydrofoiler XE-1 is designed to replicate the cycling experience, only on the water. It took seven years’ worth of prototypes and tweaking to come to fruition, and is built with three electric-assist modes: training, cruise and performance. There’s self-leveling design forward to handle light wind and chop, and the manufacturer says users can hit 13 mph on flat water.

Shipping of the first units is expected to start in late 2019. To reserve one of the bikes, buyers can place a 10-percent, refundable deposit now.

What yachties are saying: Company creator Guy Howard-Willis told us back in August that a yacht captain called him and said, “Every yacht owner is going to want a few of these. It’s almost like an adventure cycling sport.”

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Guy Howard-Willis didn’t have a “lightbulb” moment. His experience was more like basking in the sunshine for so long that he couldn’t help but to see the world through different-colored sunglasses.

He’d been selling sports equipment online in New Zealand and Australia, immersing himself not only in the water toys that existed, but also in what consumers wanted. At the same time, he was a cycling junkie, riding everything from mountain bikes to racing bikes. For years, the two streams of thought were banging around, and into, each other in his mind.

“The idea has been floating around in my head for a while,” he says. “Having a bike to ride on water was pretty obvious, but I’ve always been fascinated by how foils work on boats, how they lift the boats out of the water.”

About a half-dozen years ago, he went to a conference where a motivational speaker challenged participants to make their ideas a reality. So, he finally did.

He enlisted a full-time designer, a fearless test rider and an engineer with simulation software to develop foiling-bike prototypes — seven, in all — ultimately creating the version that is in preorder now. Howard-Willis and his team were having molds built this summer, with the first units expected to ship in New Zealand by the end of this year. The first Manta5 Hydrofoiler XE-1 bikes bound for U.S. shores are due to arrive in early 2019, at a retail price of $6,895.

“We’ve had yacht owners call,” he says. “There’s a captain from Florida who looks after a few yachts. He said, ‘Send them down. Every yacht owner is going to want a few of these. It’s almost like an adventure cycling sport.’”

Some 30,000 people have registered for information on the company’s website, and Howard-Willis says 40 percent of them are Americans. He’s now thinking about ways to give them all what they want beyond the base model, be it a racing version or one that can surf down waves.

“If you look at that progression of how cycling has gotten faster with all kinds of bikes, I think our bike is really just the beginning of a whole new industry, a whole new sport,” he says. “That’s the exciting part for me. If it becomes competitive, it could end up in the Olympics.”

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