From racing theatre to working reality

Ask most superyacht captains about foiling and the conversation tends to start with the America’s Cup. Fifty-knots-plus speeds, AC75s flying past Auckland and Barcelona, the SailGP circuit putting the same technology in front of stadium crowds – foiling as broadcast spectacle.

That part of the story is well rehearsed. Less rehearsed is the parallel one, which is more useful for anyone responsible for a tender programme or a chase boat fleet. Foiling has become engineering, engineering that holds up under commercial duty cycles and after-sales contracts, and that can be specified in a tender package without a footnote.

Two decades of America’s Cup campaigns and seven seasons of SailGP have funded an iteration cycle no commercial maritime programme could have afforded on its own: carbon structures pushed beyond aerospace tolerances, active flight control loops solved at millisecond resolution, foil geometries refined through hundreds of variants, battery and propulsion systems tested to failure in regatta venues from Sydney to Cagliari.

The boats were built for entertainment while the data went somewhere else, into a small group of companies that have spent the past five years turning that knowledge into commercial product. Their boats no longer look like Cup foilers, they look like tenders, pilot boats, water taxis. But what has really changed is the experience of being on board.

Luca Rizzotti, Founder at Foiling Organization, Founder and President at the Foiling Week and WeAreFoiling, AC40 Class Manager,
The Magenta Project Ambassador, Editorial Board Member at Journal of Sailing Technology and VP at Moth Class.

A foiling tender does not slam. The hull rises clear of the chop and the bumpy ride that defines a planing tender simply does not happen. The engine, when electric, makes almost no sound and there is no hull pounding the surface. Guests arrive at dinner dry and able to talk about something other than the crossing. This is the part that does not appear in spec sheets; it is the part a chief stewardess notices first.

Energy consumption follows the same logic. A foiling hull lifted clear of the water has dramatically lower drag than a planing hull pushing through it and the fuel saving is substantial enough to change the operational economics of the tender programme.

For yachts cruising in jurisdictions where emissions zones, marine reserves and wake restrictions tighten every season, the same hull behaviour that delivers the comfort also delivers the regulatory access. A foiling chase boat keeps station with a sailing programme without disturbing the racecourse or the anchored fleet. A foiling tender can approach a protected anchorage in conditions where a conventional one would be turned away.

What the America’s Cup and SailGP have contributed to the broader industry is the engineering maturity of the components a foiling boat needs to be a working tool, from control system to certification pathway, all of which has moved in the past five years from possible to ordinary.

The technical maturity supporting all of this has come from racing, but it has been translated by a small number of companies into commercial product. Vessev, in Auckland, has put a hydrofoiling vessel into certified passenger service under Maritime New Zealand certification, with elements designed to international DNV standards, and is now positioning a luxury configuration aimed at tender duty. Candela has industrialised electric hydrofoiling at the recreational and small-passenger scale, with a foil architecture engineered to fail safely at a designed breaking point if the boat strikes a submerged object. Artemis Technologies, in Belfast, has built its eFoiler platform around retractable hydrofoils with replaceable leading edges. Navier, in California, has taken a similar architecture into the high-end dayboat market. The convergence is in the engineering principles, not the marketing.

What matters here is that the technology has reached a level of supportability the superyacht segment can actually accept. After-sales infrastructure has been built around commercial customers in pilotage and scheduled passenger operations, where uptime is contractual and parts availability is not negotiable. The Port of Tyne is taking delivery of the United Kingdom’s first electric foiling pilot boat in 2026 on a service argument. Pilot operations do not buy prototypes.

And this is the threshold the superyacht segment requires. A tender is not allowed to be unreliable, a chase boat is not allowed to need the founder on speed dial. What has shifted in the last few years is that foiling boats no longer require that kind of relationship with the maker; they are equipment that comes with a service contract.

The questions that remain are about specification and whether the operational profile of a given yacht justifies the capital cost, whether the marina infrastructure on the cruising route can supply the charging required, where the platform is electric, and whether the crew is prepared for a vessel that asks slightly different things of its driver, particularly in the transitions between foiling and displacement modes. None of these has a universal answer.

What the America’s Cup and SailGP have contributed to the broader industry, then, is not speed. The industry was never going to need 60 knots. The contribution is the engineering maturity of the components a foiling boat needs to be a working tool, from control system to certification pathway, all of which has moved in the past five years from possible to ordinary. The boats now reaching superyacht docks are equipment and they can be specified accordingly. 

This article first appeared in The Superyacht Report: Captains Focus. With our open-source policy, it is available to all by following this link, so read and download the latest issue and any of our previous issues in our library.

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