There’s one moment from the 2023 Mini Transat Race that is seared into my memory. I was six days into the Atlantic, crossing alone on my 21-footer Terminal Leave. The trade winds were cranking and the boat was surfing along. I remember it vividly—tiller in one hand, mainsheet in the other, appendages humming as the boat accelerated down each wave. Nothing but wave tops and open sea in front of me. For hours everything felt perfectly in flow.

And then, in one explosive moment one of my rudders sheared off the transom. The boat rounded up violently, and I was suddenly in survival mode. Once I discovered that there was no water coming into the boat, I focused on the repair and diverted 300 nautical miles further south to Cabo Verde for a technical stopover. Without a satellite communication link to my shore team, it was on me and my Pilot book to find a port. Fortunately, or maybe through telepathy, I arrived at the correct dock that my girlfriend coordinated to have help available on a Saturday morning.

With the rudder repaired and remounted, I got back to it. Once at sea, alone again, I was reflecting on the previous 48 hours and reminded myself that I was racing for a larger purpose. Sure, getting to the finish was the point, but I was really out there to raise awareness for U.S. Patriot Sailing, the dear-to-my-heart non-profit that supports the veteran community navigate much bigger challenges than I could ever experience in my little boat.

The three years of commitment to that race was one of the most meaningful experiences of my life. I am truly grateful I had the opportunity to race amongst the now and future legends of the French solo offshore racing scene. I am frothing, ready to take it on again. But this time, I’m attacking the race with the most advanced boat I can get my hands on. A focused mindset and a renewed sense of purpose is driving me every day.

The Mini 6.50 fleet used for the race has evolved dramatically from its origin in 1977. Racing across the Atlantic every other year since has led to radical design advancements that eventually make their way to the larger IMOCA 60s of the Vendée Globe. The newest generation of foiling ocean-racing sailboats are rewriting what is known to be possible. Consider this: Nicomatic-Petit Bateau, a foiling Mini 6.50 Proto, broke a new distance record for 352.59 nautical miles in 24 hours during this year’s race. That confirms what many of us already know—the foiling Mini generation is an open invitation to blitz the course.

While I’ve been thinking a lot about what it would mean to participate in this race again from a performance perspective, rather than a mere participant, I’ve also thought about what the race represents for me. After a decade on active duty in the Marine Corps, the last Mini campaign was a bridge that helped me transition back into civilian life. Through that experience, U.S. Patriot Sailing was central to my journey. While my first campaign was about raising awareness for the organization, this next one is about expanding support so more veterans can access the same community that helped me.

When I began exploring what a second campaign might look like, one name kept surfacing: Samuel Manuard. Manuard is one of the most influential and forward-thinking French naval architects today, with a specialty in offshore shorthanded sailing. His designs range from Class40s, to the winning IMOCA in the recent Transat Café L’Or, and even the new generation of planing performance production boats for Beneteau. Simply put: His boats are fast.

In addition to his legendary designs, Manuard is approachable and responsive. Our relationship began with a simple e-mail, in English, and no introduction. From the outset, he believed in me and was transparent about the design process. In November 2024, we finally met in person, on the famous Vendée Globe pontoon next to Charal 2, just days before it was to set off on its non-stop race around the world. From that initial handshake, we were committed to working together. It was a surreal moment as I locked in this incredible yacht designer and knew I would be one day crossing the starting line on the newest generation Classe Mini 6.50.

In the Spring of 2025, my partner, Jane Millman, and I met again with Manuard in France where we spent hours talking through the design options. As he sketched what he thought the boat would look like, we talked through the pros and cons of specific features—and there are many. The campaign is now launched and construction is underway at JPS Production, in La Trinité-sur-Mer. It will be a state-of-the-art carbon flyer. This new prototype is the next evolution of Manuard’s foiling design, with a scow bow, large foils, twin T-foil rudders, a canting keel, rotating wing mast and deck sweeping mainsail.

There were certainly reservations and reflective moments as I committed to this project. A foiling Mini is an entirely different experience from my older RG 650. The learning curve will be steep. Mistakes will be obvious and costly. The speeds will be higher, the loads greater, and everything far more extreme. It’s more boat, more power, and more responsibility. But that’s also what makes this next chapter so exciting. The goal isn’t to simply complete the race; it’s to push the boundaries of design and maximize performance. Ultimately, my new mission is to win the Mini Transat.

The race starts in two years, but the race to get to the starting line began long ago. The build, testing, training, qualification races, preparation, and refinements will be wrapped into a relentless campaign. This time, I understand the process better. I know what weeks at sea alone feels like and how fatigue creeps into decision making. I am far more mature and know how to stay disciplined when the weather doesn’t cooperate or a routing choice doesn’t pan out.

My expectations are high but grounded. I know I will need to adapt to this new foiling platform, refine my boathandling and understand the complex systems on this boat. I’m ready to put in the work as I focus on this campaign full time and bring onboard with me the more than 700 U.S. Patriot Sailing participants across multiple states. With locations on both coasts, and two new teams located in Seattle and Tacoma, Washington, the impact and reach of this organization continues to expand. The organization continues to provide veterans with community and a renewed sense of purpose supporting each other, which often disappears after taking off the uniform. While solo sailing is a lonely challenge, the difficulties faced after returning from combat deployments or transitioning to civilian life are far more isolating for many veterans.

The foiling element is fitting, for this new campaign is an opportunity to give back at a higher level. It is a platform to raise awareness and to increase support. By helping the organization expand programs and create new opportunities for veterans, there is a bright future for the veteran community this team supports. If I have learned anything over the past few years, it’s that purpose is what gets me through tough miles.

The next two years will be demanding, humbling and exhilarating, but all of it will be worth it. While I’m excited for the race to come, I’m more eager to share the highs and lows, and to inspire. In two years, I will be at sea, savoring my victories and facing my failures. I will be alone in my foiler, propelled by wind and a patriot’s purpose.

The post The American Sailor Intent on Foiling Across the Atlantic appeared first on Sailing World.

For the first day of our Boat of the Year test sailing, small-craft warning flags were whipping, and so too was the rain when we sailed off the beach at the Annapolis Sailing School with the BirdyFish S—S as in solo or single—without any clue of how to handle the scow-shaped 14-footer and its long, arcing and pointed “mustache” foils.

When it’s time to put our judge Monica Morgan into the driver’s seat, she hops in with her trademark giddy giggle. We don’t know what she knows: She’s never foiled.

She orients herself with the whereabouts of the boat’s key control lines: a 16-to-1 vang, downhaul and the 2-to-1 mainsheet. She promptly trims the reefed square-top mainsail, turns onto a reach, sails 100 feet or so away, then rises up onto both foils, streaking away as if she’s done it a million times.

“Insanely easy,” is how Morgan would later describe the experience, which is the whole point of the BirdyFish S.

Unlike the BirdyFish Double (Race), which has symmetric J-shaped foils, the BirdyFish S has curved asymmetric foils that can’t be inverted or swapped if damaged, so launching should always be a calculated effort. Still, says Hardy Peters of East Coast Sailboats, the U.S.’ BirdyFish distributor, getting underway is a simple affair. With the foils up in their stowed position, step one is to roll the boat to the water’s edge on its custom wheels, which fit into slots in the hull. These are removed once the boat is afloat, and then stored in a bag on the boat. Wade to waist-high water (two feet or more), push down and lock the foils into their sacrificial Delrin bearing cases. Do the same with the rudder and off you go.

Like the foils themselves, the BirdyFish S’s polyester and honeycomb hull is built (in France) in halves and then glued together. A robust structural bulkhead runs the full length of the boat, giving it some serious rigidity. The scow hull shape also provides strength and, more importantly, stability. Unlike other singlehanded foilers (such as the Moth or Waszp), the BirdyFish is stable at rest and far more forgiving in crash-downs.

Most other high-tech foilers also have dynamic rudder-angle adjustment, but with the BirdyFish S, rudder angle is preset and can be adjusted on the water with a wrench. The single-piece aluminum mast and a black Dacron mainsail with two reef points also opens up the boat to sailing in a wide range of conditions. It can be sailed upwind and downwind in displacement mode, with one crew or two, with all reefs or none at all.

“You’re probably looking somewhere between 185 to 210, max is 310 (pounds),” says Peters. “I’m 250 pounds and I can get this boat up and out in 8 knots of breeze.”

The sailing technique, Peters explains to the judges before splashing, is to shift weight aft when building speed, and once it takes off, shift forward enough to give the boat a slight bow-down attitude. Minimal rudder movement is essential, he adds, “Don’t sail it like an ILCA. Subtle tiller movements prevent spinouts.”

As for tacking, he says, “This boat will easily foil tack and jibe. Just remember that the best [exit] angle on this boat is 55 degrees. So, you have to take that 55 and go another 55 or more, so you’re looking at a 110-degree turn basically. But on a jibe, it’s a lot less.”

Both Morgan and fellow judge Mike Ingham eventually figured out the technique enough to pull off a few, albeit sketchy, foiling turns in 15 to 20 winds and flat water. And their straight-line speeds were more than impressive.

“I was a little surprised at how fast it would go,” Morgan says. “I almost wiped out once, but I never felt like I was just gonna get launched off the boat. I felt pretty locked in tacking. I was trying to figure out the right rate of turn for the tack, because you couldn’t go too slow, but if you went fast, it felt as if you were spinning out. I had that feeling a couple times, mostly tacking, but as a first-timer, it was really rewarding to go foiling so easily.”

To validate the boat’s versatility, before wrapping up our test sail, we put both Morgan and Ingham on the boat and shook out the reef. With both of them working in sync to balance the boat onto its foils, they hit their top speed of the day in one dark and streaking puff. We could hear the whooping from a good mile away, until the sleigh ride ended in a spectacular explosion of spray. Ingham slipped from his hiking strap, and Morgan casually tacked the boat back upwind and retrieved her teammate. It was easy for Ingham to get back into the boat and they soared away again.

“It was a surprisingly easy boat to foil,” Ingham says. “It was like stress-free foiling that was always just in the groove.” Morgan seconded the sentiment and says, “For never having foiled before, I was able to do it within 30 seconds, and that’s kind of crazy. But I also felt really stable on the boat, not intimidating or overwhelming at all.”

The post 2025 Boat of the Year Best Foiler: BirdyFish S appeared first on Sailing World.

Teenage brothers Gaetan and Antoine Ismael, junior sailors in Annapolis, were looking to take their dinghy sailing higher. After begging their parents long enough, they found themselves sharing a Waszp and together have been helping each other climb the learning curve. The skills they’re learning on foil are transitioning back to their Club 420 racing, but more importantly, their parents say, the brothers are spending more time on the water having fun with flight. We caught up with them at the Helly Hansen Sailing World Regatta Series to learn more about their new obsession.

The post Brothers of the Waszp appeared first on Sailing World.

Love it or hate it, performance yachting has taken a quantum leap over the last two decades with the proliferation of foiling, which has permeated throughout the sport—from the America’s Cup to all manners of wind-driven board sports. In Italy last summer, however, a new and curious chapter in foiling arrived with the launch of Roberto Lacorte’s FlyingNikka. The sleek black maxi bears a striking resemblance to an AC75, but at 60 feet, it is far shorter and—significantly—has an original remit for a foiler: to compete in maxi fleet races, both inshore and offshore.

Lacorte, who founded the pharmaceuticals company PharmaNutra Group in 2003 with his M32 sailor and brother Andrea, is a keen sailor. For many years he raced in the maxi fleet aboard his Mills-Vismara 62 racer-cruiser SuperNikka. However, the 54-year-old also prefers speed—his other sport of choice being motorcar racing. Since 2017, he has regularly competed in the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and today races North America’s IMSA SportsCar Championship.

His penchant for speed now extends to his yachting. Initially, Lacorte was going to replace SuperNikka with a longer racing maxi, but after a season campaigning a Persico 69F foiler and inspired by the AC75 and other foilers, he began wondering whether his next maxi should or could fly too.

Given the constraints of creating a minimum-size (60-foot) maxi that foils and take part in conventional races while on a budget with limits and without an army of shore crew, he assembled a team to work on the new project. Led by North Sails Italy’s Alessio Razeto, this included Nacra 17 Olympian Lorenzo Bressani, project manager Micky Costa, and Mark Mills leading the design. Brought on board for R&D was KND, while Pure Design & Engineering handled the engineering. Nat Shaver (ex-ETNZ and American Magic, now INEOS Britannia) designed the foils. King Marine in Valencia built and assembled the boat, while Re Fraschini in Italy fabricated the foils.

Mills says he was initially skeptical whether FlyingNikka could be created without America’s Cup resources, but he eventually concluded that such a foiler could be realized if it were kept simple, meaning free from the constraints of the AC75 rule: A motor could power the hydraulic package, controlling almost everything from sails to foils, reducing crew, and making grinders and cyclors ­redundant. Similarly, with no restrictions, ride height and pitch could be controlled automatically.

After six months spent examining all options, including IMOCA-style retracting Dali foils, FlyingNikka’s design was unveiled with an AC75-style “flip-up” foil-cant arms configuration.

Aside from its size and intended use, FlyingNikka has two significant differences to an AC75. The foils cant up to weather and down to leeward like an AC75. However, they develop lift by altering the pitch of the entire wingspan (i.e., the whole wing articulates laterally around the bottom of the arm, typically from zero to 15 degrees), unlike the AC75 system where the foil arm and wing are fixed and lift develops from an airplane-style flap on the wing’s trailing edge.

This neatly avoids a significant issue of AC75 foil design and ­engineering, making a flap that operates reliably on the back of a bendy T-foil. FlyingNikka’s simpler flap-free arrangement means more freedom for its foils to deflect and the wingtips to unload. Altering the incidence of the entire wing also produces significantly more lift compared to a flap, in theory enabling the boat to take off in lighter winds.

Significant too is that while an AC75’s wings are ballasted—made of lead and steel, and some with lead bulbs—FlyingNikka’s wings are made from carbon fiber instead. Being substantially lighter, they have been far easier to engineer and manufacture.

Working in conjunction with the main foils is the rudder elevator. Its lift adjusts by raking the entire rudder. The ­bottom bearing is mounted in a transom scoop, where the rudder stock rotates about a vertical axis as usual and a lateral axis to permit the elevator to be raked by plus or minus 6 degrees via a hydraulic ram pushing and pulling the top of the stock.

To enter traditional races, FlyingNikka must comply with the Offshore Special Regs’ Category 3 STIX stability requirements, so it has a keel, which an AC75 does not. At 2,000 kilograms, this keel is small but significant given the boat weighs only 7 tons. Two extra tons on a foiling boat is costly—Lacorte reckons it chops 4 to 5 knots off their top speed. The keel, however, does have several benefits. Along with the arm of the leeward foil, the keel prevents leeway. Between the foil arm and the keel, FlyingNikka enjoys “negative leeway” (like boats with a trim tab on the keel). It also means the foils don’t need to be ballasted (unlike the AC75). It does, however, lose the righting-moment benefit of an AC75’s ballasted foil when it cants to weather.

Significant for FlyingNikka’s intended use in light winds, the keel makes the boat more manageable and less likely to capsize when its foils are providing minimal lift. In practice, it also smooths the transition between flying and displacement modes. In the future, the team might make record attempts when its keel could be removed, although it would still need some arrangement for the engine water intake (otherwise located in the keel).

The boat was first launched in early May, and its successful flight at the very outset was most remarkable for such an experimental platform. This was mainly down to the R&D effort put in by the design team, and especially its access to America’s Cup CFD and engineering tools. Since then, FlyingNikka competed at the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup in Sardinia and at Les Voiles de St. Tropez. The latter was disappointingly windless, although valuable lessons were learned about how to sail it in displacement mode. But Lacorte showed the boat’s extraordinary potential in the former, starting last in its own class and sailing through the fleet.

To enter fleet races, the boat has been given a stratospheric IRC rating of 3.866, so it is unlikely ever to win under corrected time. (The previous IRC TCC high scorer was the ClubSwan 125 Skorpios at a mere 2.149). Lacorte seems satisfied simply being out on the racecourse.

In terms of performance, FlyingNikka is not designed for peak speeds, although the sailing team managed 27 knots upwind and 38 knots downwind at respectable angles, with more to come. The boat, including the foil package, is designed for conditions typical of the Med, i.e., light. As a result, it has larger foils, requiring less wind to take off, which comes at the expense of top speed. Downwind, FlyingNikka needs around 9 knots of wind to fly, 10 to fly well and 12-plus to achieve optimal VMG, at which point it is ­making close to 30 knots.

The team is examining how to best sail the boat in displacement mode when it is too light to foil. Far from being a complete write-off, the boat can still make good progress relying on its ultralight displacement and substantial sail area. Trickiest is the transition between nonfoiling and foiling because there are techniques such as sailing lower angles or increasing foil rake that can permit early takeoff. But the poor VMG and excess drag required to achieve this can be slower than sailing in displacement mode.

Lacorte is also learning the oddities of handling a boat that can sail at more than twice the windspeed. While foiling, the apparent wind angle is rarely more than 50 degrees, even downwind. Upwind can be only 19 degrees.

All foiling boats require slightly different techniques to perform maneuvers well and remain airborne. “You have to move and steer a lot,” Lacorte explains. “It is different compared to a normal boat. It is necessary to maintain flow over the foil, to keep pressure on it, and carry out maneuvers in a strong, fast way. Then you generate incredible G-force, like a sports car. You have to hang on, otherwise you risk falling overboard.”

With Lacorte, there are just five crew, thanks to the engine-­powered hydraulics and automation. As with the AC75, the crew resides in fore- and aft-oriented trenches, with the helmsman ­forward to windward with a screen and a wheel in front of him, and the flight controller forward and to leeward. Aft are the mainsail and headsail trimmers, who swap sides during maneuvers. Farthest aft, the navigator and the systems operator are stationary. Each crew, including the driver, controls an array of waterproof buttons operating the hydraulics, including some safety ones too, such as to dump sheets. Dropping and raising the foils is done via foot pedals. Inboard of each cockpit is a powered winch used for the A1 sheet, halyards and furling lines.

Part of the secret to sailing FlyingNikka is the automation of the foil wing’s articulation in conjunction with that of the rudder elevator rake. This, for example, enables the crew to adjust ride height and fore and aft trim continuously. At split-second ­intervals, the automation then adjusts the pitch of the foil wing and rudder rake to make this happen. This requires the software to be trained, partly through the crew teaching it, but also through its own intelligence, learning from how the crew operate the boat. Also vital is the system continuously knowing the exact orientation (pitch, yaw and roll), movement and acceleration of the yacht. As a result, FlyingNikka is littered with rate gyros and accelerometers ­monitoring its every motion.

Essential too is the speed of the hydraulics. To ensure maximum performance, the system operates at a substantial 500 mb of pressure, so there is no need for stored power, although it does require the engine to run constantly.

Above the deck, the rotating rig is a conventional two-spreader affair but without runners. The mainsheet provides much of the forestay tension. Given the boat’s speed, sails are ultra-flat and the wardrobe is limited—just a mainsail with a low telescopic boom (outhaul controlled by the boom being pumped in or out at the gooseneck), with a deck sweeper and three jibs, the smallest on an inner forestay, plus an A1 for use in displacement mode. The aim, according to sailmaker Alessio Razeto, is to have the minimum sails necessary to get the boat flying because they become drag rather than driving force and need to be reduced rapidly afterward.

FlyingNikka is capable of all “the foiler moves,” flying both downwind and upwind, and foiling jibes and tacks. These will be refined with practice, but it is this voyage into the unknown that Lacorte and his highly experienced crew relish. And where FlyingNikka is breaking new ground is in Lacorte’s desire to race it offshore. Typically, this type of foil configuration doesn’t like waves—foils suddenly stop working when they are not immersed—while a flying hull colliding with a wavetop can damage crew and the boat due to the deceleration and the resulting loads. However, Lacorte says he is pleased with how well FlyingNikka is performing in 6-foot waves thus far. This is partly due to the AC75-style “bustle” (the long, shallow skeg that runs down the length of the hull’s centerline), designed to ease the transition between displacement sailing and foiling. It is also due to the boat’s center of gravity being quite far aft, which means it typically touches down stern-first. Razeto admits his biggest fear is “an uncontrolled takeoff with the bow up.” Normally, it is the back of the boat that lands first when this happens. “We have done that a couple of times,” he says. “With a nosedive, a lot of water comes over the boat, but it is not really dangerous.” However, the stern reimmersing first appears to be substantially less dramatic than going from foiling into a giant nosedive.

With its first Med season in the books, modifications are currently being made to FlyingNikka before next year’s 151 Miglia-Trofeo Cetilar, followed by the Rolex Giraglia and the Rolex Middle Sea Race. Female tooling for FlyingNikka remains at King Marine, ready for any additional brave individuals with a craving for speed to buy into Lacorte’s vision with a budget that Lacorte reckons is less than that of a Maxi 72.

The post The Flying Maxi appeared first on Sailing World.

Garda is sailing’s amphitheater, a place with a sailing culture unlike any other. Centrally located in Europe and with clinical conditions, it is also the heartbeat of international wind sports. In the cradle of the Italian Alps, it is completely normal to run across boats from Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and everywhere else. With a whistling northerly Pelér in the morning and a warm Ora southerly in the afternoon, Garda is blessed with two distinct world-class sailing conditions for much of the year. And the scenery is the most stunning of any sailing venue. All of this is to say there really is no finer place for one-design sailors, wingers, kiters and foilers to play, which is why Waszp sailors gather once a year for Foiling Week, and this year the official Waszp Games and World Championship.

While Garda is known for being a near-perfect spot and easily accessible to those in Europe, getting there from Hawaii is anything but a straight shot. But it is worth it. To get to Garda this past July, I negotiate through four canceled flights, 10 days of delayed baggage, and a bunch of other annoying hiccups until I finally reach my final terminal in Verona, Italy.

But this time, I arrive with no bags and no gear.

No worries. I’ll figure something out.

Running on four hours of sleep in 48 hours, bleary-eyed and buzzing, I hitch a ride to the yacht club in Malcesine with my coach, who is here on holiday. I find and set up my charter boat and accept that my bags might not show up for a long time. But I need to go sailing, so I plan to buy a pair of boardshorts and a life jacket using the small allowance from the airline. I also plan to check out everything Foiling Week has to offer, including its extensive collection of foiling craft. There isn’t any other event I know of where so many fleets and high-performance sailors, designers and fanatics come together to geek out on foiling.

At the club, I quickly experience the generosity of this foiling community. I, a relative stranger, am able to secure a sail and foils before the first race starts the following morning. I hit the pillow hard that night, sleep-deprived and jet-lagged.

Fortunately, sailing events in Garda have a relaxed schedule. Our briefing isn’t until midday, so I hop over to one of Garda’s many stocked sailing shops and lay down my precious euros for a pair of boardshorts and a life jacket for racing. On the water soon after my shopping spree, I can sense the jet lag. I’m not as sharp as I need to be, nor as smooth as I have to be.

For Foiling Week, the Waszp fleet is assigned to course racing. This means our races, which are normally 20 minutes everywhere else, will be more than 40 minutes long. At this point in the regatta, I’m focused on figuring out the quirks of my charter boat. In tricky and variable conditions, I move up in the standings with every race, which feels darn good at the end of the day. But for this regatta, it’s not the scores that matter to me; it’s the chance to meet new people, to train and have a good time while I’m still young. Everyone here is happy.

Once Foiling Week wraps up, there’s a week before the Waszp Games and World Championship officially start. While Foiling Week is a significant event with nearly 70 boats competing, this regatta has an absolutely insane number of entries: 160. Every day the boat park gets more packed as Waszps roll in on trailers and inside travel boxes, portaged by sailors from far-flung places like Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. This year there are 30 girls signed up to race, one of whom is New Zealander Elsie Beavis, who placed second in the pre-Worlds regatta (and would go on to win the women’s world title in Garda).

To my surprise, my bags arrive the day before the World Championship begins, so after some minor boat tweaks in the final afternoon training session, I’m on to the main event the following morning.

The Waszp Games, where all 160 sailors will be racing in well over 20 knots, is next-level stuff. The talent in the gold fleet has risen so rapidly over the past year that a winner of the last major event these days can hardly crack the top 10 at the next regatta. But there are plenty of beginners here too because new sailors can register for the green fleet, where they get coaching in tandem with the Games event happening nearby.

The first challenge of the Games is the slalom. This format is unique to the Waszp class, where groups careen down the racecourse from a reaching start, then sail downwind through a series of marks in rounds of knockout qualification, with a quarterfinal, a semifinal and a three-round final. For this insanity, Garda delivers. A clear sky and nonexistent wind in the morning get the afternoon’s Ora wind engine cranking early ahead of the noontime church bells. It comes on fast and hard, and with miles of fetch, the chop is something else.

The perfectly flat water of the past few weeks is now gone, which leaves everyone scrambling to change settings to deal with the added challenge of battling chop. Having left the ramp immediately after the wind started to fill, my boat is set for the wrong conditions. So, as it gets windier and choppier, I’m way out of tune and struggling. With little practice in the short chop with my flat-water settings, I limp through the slalom, barely making it to the quarterfinals.

Once I’m back on shore, though, I can appreciate the spectacle of the slalom. At such a high level, the slightest mistake anywhere on the course instantaneously shuffles places. And this is what eventually happens to the slalom’s overall leader, who wins the first two races of the finals but becomes airborne on one last jibe, stacking it within throwing distance of the starting line and coughing up the title to one of his fellow countrymen.

One great practice of the Waszp class is the daily fleet debrief, led by the person who did the best for the day. Discussions include the top-of-the-line starting strategy, body movement in the chop and higher sensitivity, all of which I will attempt to apply in the course races to come.

With the slalom portion out of the way, the championship racing gets underway. To manage the insane amount of boats, organizers split the fleet into gold and blue fleets, and there’s the green fleet, which goes out with coaches to practice and hone boathandling. For the first day, I’m in the blue fleet, racing on the western side of the race area, close to the lakeside village of Lemone. This racecourse is less windy and wavier than the other course off the shore of Malcesine.

Once racing starts, it’s clear the left side of the course is significantly windier and flatter. But the wind slowly clocks to the right throughout the day, leading to large gains on the right on the later races. Some interesting discussions are brought up in the briefing after racing, and the conclusion is that the people who are doing the best are the people who are actively adjusting their ride height while foiling. Changing ride height from tack to tack allows better control in the different areas of the racecourse, allowing for minimal drag in the flatter water and higher control as chop becomes more of a factor.

On the final day of qualification, I’m somewhere in the mid-20s, well deep into the gold fleet, but there are 15 boats within 10 points. The wind is definitely lower, and I’m assigned to racecourse Alpha, off Malcesine, where the puffs are up to around 14 knots while some parts of the racecourse are below 5 knots. In these conditions, I have the best race of my event, where, with an advantage through maneuvers, I’m able to round the last upwind mark first.

My proud moment is short-lived, however. I sail into a windless hole, and the boat plummets to the water, allowing seven boats to soar past before I can get it back up and flying. I manage to get four of them back on the downwind leg, reclaiming valuable places.

Back on the Bravo course the next morning, ­conditions are similar to the previous day, except it is flatter and a bit less windy. It’s quite clear to everyone here which side of the course is best, which only makes it—and the fleet—more compressed.

My first day in the gold fleet is… How do I say it? Fierce. The wind is up from the previous day, and the starts are so hard-fought that the first three are general recalls. Even under a black flag, the racing is elbows-out. After every start, I find myself playing catch-up, and before one race I realize I’ve forgotten to put the plug in the boat. I’m able to make it back out for the final race and feel OK with my two results for the day. But I’m annoyed by my easily preventable mistake.

The last day is the windiest of the gold fleet racing, and with a 70-boat fleet racing around at 20 knots, the sailing area is manic. Starting again on course Alpha, the strategy play is deciding between dipping into Malcesine to score a puff or attempting a bunch of tacks up the narrow band of the best wind. With each leg of the course it seems different strategies pay off indiscriminately and the fleet gets turned on its head every time. Like getting to these Games, I remind myself nothing in Waszp sailing is easy at first. But once you get it wired, everything is not only fine, but some of the best experiences possible on water.

My final standing in the championship is 32nd, which is not bad in this competitive fleet, but it’s not quite how I wanted to finish. The experience, however, leaves me with the knowledge to compete stronger in next year’s event in Sorrento. It also motivates me to advance the level of Waszp sailing at my home club and elsewhere. Because when going to a world-level competition, it’s not only racing skills that get developed, but also the connections and friendships that allow sailing to grow and expand as it does in Garda.

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Back in the day, when I ­captained my college football team (cue up Springsteen’s “Glory Days”), I always felt a little nervous during the ritual of pulling on the pads, when the adrenaline and butterflies started to simultaneously stir. Last July, I’m having a deja-vu moment of that particularly unpleasant sensation as I’m handed a helmet, wetsuit, rash guard and life jacket moments before heading out for my first-ever attempt at helming a foiling craft, the Persico 69F. The name is derived from the boat’s 6.9-meter length (which translates to 22 feet, 7 inches).

The fledgling one-design class’s welcoming motto is “foiling for everyone,” a notion I am definitely about to put to the test.

After a pair of previous winter events in Miami for a half-dozen international “youth teams” (25 and younger) and an appearance at South Carolina’s Charleston Race Week, the 69F roadshow has rolled into Newport, Rhode Island, as part of the New York Yacht Club’s Race Week. This is the fourth stop on the American 69F opening season’s stateside circuit. Still ahead is a mixed series with the NYYC; an event in Halifax, Nova Scotia; and the grand finale in Pensacola, Florida, the 69F Cup presented by American Magic. That makes sense because the 69F is purportedly the only other crewed foiling monohull outside of the America’s Cup.

The 69F ringleader in the United States is Miami-based Alex Sastre, a sailing-crazed yacht broker and promoter (a separate 69F European circuit is under different management). Sastre’s 69F mantra is simple: “We are training the next generation of sailors.” But he’s also organizing foiling academies for adults outside of the youth initiative, presumably for numbskulls like me.

One of Sastre’s right-hand guys, a very patient young man from Italy named Pietro Luca who has drawn the unlucky straw of taking me out, gave me a 69F once-over: the pre-preg carbon construction (the boat is built in Italy by Persico Marine), the square-topped mainsail, the V-shaped lifting foils, the T-shaped rudder, the lifting fin and so on, and finally, the handhold for gripping while steering. “Very important,” he says. It’s pretty much the only thing I can concentrate on.

Assuming the helm, with the sails still down and no warning, Sastre tows us out to Narragansett Bay on a big RIB doing Crazy Ivan at about 25 knots, which of course gets us up and foiling immediately, and is easily one of the most terrifying and unexpected moments of my life. “Just follow the outboard!” Luca shouts helpfully.

And then the sails go up. I start to slide up onto the rack, at which time I sky the 10-foot-long tiller extension—which careens us off on a broad reach and into a capsize. Approximately 20 seconds into my initial fling at foiling, we are swimming. Sheesh, how embarrassing. Given the circumstances, Luca is much gentler and more understanding than I would’ve been. Grazie, Pietro.

With a 12-knot southwesterly sea breeze filling in, we shake ourselves off, get everything and everyone back on their feet, sheet it all home and, holy smokes… “Here we go,” Luca says. “You’re up. You’re flying!” 

Every sport, at every level, needs a face, someone recognizable to make it personal and relatable. The next day, spearing around the 69F racecourse riding shotgun with Sastre on the RIB, my connection to the real foilers who actually know what they are doing is personified by a diminutive Hawaiian sailor named CJ Perez. At 5-foot-4, Perez is slight in stature but casts a huge shadow over her fellow competitors. At one point, we grab a young Swedish sailor to transfer from one boat to another, and we ask him who in the fleet he is looking out for. “That would pretty much be CJ,” he says.

The New York YC race committee has commandeered the southern half of the bay for its race circles, so the six-boat 69F fleet is towed (with dispatch) to race just north of the Newport Bridge. It takes a while for the sea breeze to fill, but once it does we are joined by more foilers—a flurry of Moths and a trio of Nacra 17s—all zipping around with the 69F skiffs. Point proven for Sastre. “This is what I said! This is the newest generation of sailors!” he beams.

There are six races ­scheduled for the day, with the first three laid out on a triangle course as the first wisps of the new southerly darken the waters. Before long, there is a solid breeze. Even a dunce like me understands that with foiling boats, the longer you’re on the foils, the better your odds to, ahem, foil the competition. And the dude from Sweden is correct: On this day, nobody is more dialed in than CJ Perez.

It’s no wonder. At 18, with three years of competitive sailing under her belt, she’s nothing less than a prodigy, a two-time world champion in the O’pen Bic class; the 2021 US national champ in the Waszp foiler; and the first American female to win a race on the SailGP circuit, which she did in Cadiz, Spain, last year aboard Team USA.

On my unofficial scorecard (these are preliminary training races, with the real ones scheduled for later in the week), Perez takes a close second in the first race, then absolutely crushes everyone in the next two. Nobody can match her skills getting airborne and ­staying there.

The race committee relocates the circle and sets up a quadrilateral-shaped course for the final trio of matches, which unfortunately concur with the dying of the breeze. That means the 69Fs plod around the course in mainly displacement mode, considerably leveling the playing field. Once grounded, Perez finishes those three contests in middling fashion.

Afterward, I catch up with her on the beach, where she is derigging the boat, and ask how she got involved with the 69F.

“I saw it on Instagram. I thought it was super cool,” she says, echoing Sastre’s remarks that the class has a huge presence on social media and uses it for both promotion and recruitment. Kids these days, right?

She’s pretty happy with her performance in the first three races, not so much in the final three. But she shrugs it off, mentioning that she is missing her regular flight controller, and her two crewmates weighed in at about 40 kilos apiece. Her competitors, some of which have three crew aboard, have a distinct weight advantage in displacement conditions.

“It’s so hard on foiling boats when you don’t foil,” she says. “Just super frustrating. When you have more flying time than everyone else, you’ll be in front.”

She makes it sound easy.

That said, Perez makes no secret about her ambitions. “I’m a foiler,” she says, making it clear that the concept of being a mere sailor wasn’t a major priority. “And I’m here because I want to be part of a team and learn to work with a team. In the future, I want to race in SailGP and the America’s Cup, which is all about teamwork. This is a stepping stone.”

Then she’s back to work. And I am left with the distinct impression we’ll all be hearing a lot more about Perez down the line.

We are trucking. At least, in my world. I catch 17.4 on a quick glance at the speedo before my attention is drawn constantly elsewhere. (Sadly, I later learn the top speed recorded in a 69F is 34 knots, twice what I thought was epic.)

But enough about the future; back to my own first moments of flight. I’ll admit a trained chimp could’ve handled my job because Luca and a young woman from Argentina handle all the necessary flight controls. The one thing I have going for me is that I’ve tacked out of Narragansett Bay on a summer southwesterly a million times, so once we get the whole show up and running, I can pick out a landmark near all the old familiar Narragansett Bay shoreside attractions (Castle Hill, Beavertail) and aim directly for it. Still, things seem to be happening quickly. Luca’s instructions, after chiding me not to oversteer (more swimming was not on his agenda), are along the lines of what you might hear in a gym from a personal trainer: “Up! Down! Up! Down!”

But we are trucking. At least, in my world. I catch 17.4 on a quick glance at the speedo before my attention is drawn constantly elsewhere. (Sadly, I later learn the top speed recorded in a 69F is 34 knots, twice what I thought was epic.) At the mouth of the bay, off Castle Hill, the incoming breeze and outgoing current kick up some pretty good seas, and I catch more than one complete wall of water to the kisser. Good, wet times.

I will confess to being a bit chagrined when I later saw the photos of me steering from inside the boat, with a death grip on the handhold because I was terrified of losing control of the tiller if I again attempted to scoot out on the rack. But still, like mountain climbers who summit Everest and take a snapshot at the top, it’s proof of foiling.

Near Beavertail, a local ­hotshot sailor and friend of mine, Glenn Walters, swaps driving positions with me, and I’ll admit that the conditions are considerably more gnarly for him. But when they capsize soon after, I am somewhat relieved. Once ashore, I thank Walters for making me feel better, and he snaps, “I wasn’t driving then.”

OK, sorry bud.

As it happens, I run into the 69er squad at a downtown Newport joint called Pour Judgement later that night. Yes, I’ve been celebrating my mastery of foiling. And here I’d like to remind everyone that even small victories are victories. As in, with sheepish smiles all around, Sastre says to me, “I asked them which one of you was the best driver, you or Glenn. And they say you are the funniest…”

Always enjoy those tiny wins, my friends. So, foiling for everyone, eh? If nothing else, regarding that motto, I consider myself a living example.

The post First-Time Foiler appeared first on Sailing World.

The first event in US waters for the Persico 69F Youth Foiling Gold Cup international circuit attracted little attention, perhaps because its outreach depended almost entirely on cryptic social media. But in the end, Team Argentina came out on top in the kickoff. Nacra 17 Olympians Dante Cittadini and Teresa Romairone were joined by Marcos Fernandez, twenty-somethings setting a standard for what it takes to win. Among US hopefuls, Team Sail America was skippered by University of Rhode Island’s Henry Lee. Arthur Serra, of San Francisco, California skippered Team StFYC, representing St. Francis Yacht Club’s high school program. Also traveling east to race was StFYC high school senior Declan Donovan driving Team Thailand. US sailors represented development efforts, looking for first experiences and thrills. Donovan survived to the Finals. He and Serra share their stories here, adapted by permission from the St. Francis YC’s Mainsheet newsletter, published in March 2022.

Can’t Wait

By Arthur Serra

Last fall I saw an incredible boat on Instagram. It looked like a small AC75. It had a similar foil setup, with three big sails, and it was going fast. I poked around on the Internet until I found the Persico 69F. At the time, the St. Francis YC Junior Program sailed only Lasers because of COVID. I love the Laser, but it’s good for 4 knots upwind and 12 knots downwind. The boat on my screen was cranking upwind and downwind at 25 knots and reaching at 30. I was hooked.

I researched it whenever I had time and finally got an email address for somebody from the class association. After four months of emailing them every week I got the reply I was looking for. “There’ll be boats in Miami starting in January; come sail them by yourself or with a buddy.”

I was elated and invited my good friend and fellow junior sailor Caspar Lenz Anderson to come along. Our last week of Christmas break, on the first day of the new year, we flew out of SFO and arrived in MIA. The day after, we went out to sail the boats and break our personal speed records. We showed up an hour early. We were so excited we couldn’t help ourselves. The instructors were surprised. The home office in Italy had communicated about two “kids” coming to sail. They expected beginners wanting joyrides. Instead, what greeted them were two 16-year-old, highly-energized racers ready to go. That changed their plans for how much sailing we would do.

First, our instructors gave us a lesson on the 69F. What makes these boats special are the V-shaped foils on either side. These are akin to AC75 foils and make the boat incredibly stable. Normally, only one of these V-foils is in the water, and they produce not only upward lift, but also massive righting moment. The V-foils counter the force to leeward generated by the sail. This makes the boat want to stay flat (as compared to a Moth or Waszp, which constantly want to capsize under an overpowered rig). With so much righting moment, sails can be bigger, so the boat accelerates faster and foils sooner.

There are three positions: skipper, mainsheet trimmer and flight controller. While adjusting the rake of the foils to manage the ride height, the flight controller also works with the skipper on tactics and focuses on the gennaker when sailing downwind, watching for puffs and lulls. The mainsheet trimmer has one job, and it’s in the name. All the main trimmer does is trim, except when jibing. The boat needs to sail as flat as possible at all times. Even a slight leeward heel in a small puff can cause the boat to capsize, so the trim has to be on point. Of course, the other way to manage heel is by changing the angle to the wind. That’s where the skipper comes into play. The skipper’s job is the same as on any boat: drive, play the angles, and keep everyone working together.

We rigged the boats, launched and towed out. The boats are simple once you get a good look. There’s a large self-tacking jib, a huge main trimmed from the boom, and a big kite with a retrieval line. The controls, sails and most of the normal sailing aspects are like a 49er’s. What’s different are the foils. Both the centerboard and the rudder are T-foils, recognizable to anybody who’s seen a foiling Moth.

The V-foils, which descend at forty-five-degree angles from either side of the hull, are dropped and lifted during tacks and jibes. The V-foils and the rudder foil rake are adjusted using lines that lead to the front of the boat, and these are adjusted by the flight controller to initiate foiling and maintain proper height. Because a trapeze can be dangerous, and this class is all about safety, the 69F instead has hull extensions, “hiking racks,” where crew members sit outboard. Over the next four days, we learned how to foil, twice raising our personal speed records out of the high teens.  Now it’s 28 knots. Going that fast the boat feels light and playful. It’s a heady experience.

We started as flight controllers before moving on to skippering and mainsheet trimming. We worked hard on communication. Never before had we sailed a boat where skipper and trimmer need to be in sync to the point that even a momentary lack of concentration leads, at best, to falling off the foils and, at worst, to a capsize. By the second day, Caspar preferred trimming and I preferred driving, so we spent the next two days like that and became really synchronized. Our jibes and tacks weren’t perfect, but we could keep the boat going fast in a straight line. The first three days we zipped around Biscayne Bay, blasting past Hobies.

The fourth day lacked wind, so we went to the ocean to catch more breeze. We got the boat ripping, but to make our flight back to San Francisco we had to foil home through the shipping channel. We asked for permission from the Coast Guard but forgot to check with the harbor police, so when this strange contraption came flying into a busy channel, a high-speed chase ensued. We gave ourselves up. The police pulled us over. Luckily, it mattered when we told them the Coast Guard had given us permission. After all, they have bigger guns.

Now it can be told: We got stopped for sailing too fast. How cool is that?

The 69F is sailed in the Youth Foiling Gold Cup, a world tour Grand Prix series – think SailGP for under 25s. The first “act” of the 2022 Cup was in Miami, and we were there because the instructors on our second day made an offer we couldn’t refuse. Come back in February, they said. Come back and race. They knew we were hungry for more, and a team from the Bahamas had dropped out. We jumped on it and quickly added Sydney Lange, another member of the StFYC Junior program, to manage flight control. Caspar continued as mainsheet trimmer, and I skippered. Together, we represented St. Francis Yacht Club, competing against eight other teams – including another representing St. Francis with Declan Donovan driving. 

We gave it our all and coming back from Miami after our loss there are feelings of disappointment, but honestly, I’m inspired. We raced against some of the best youth sailors, and seeing them absolutely destroy me shows the work I have ahead. I can’t wait.

Going for the Goals

By Declan Donovan

I had never sailed a 69F, but there I was, skippering Team Thailand and representing StFYC at Act 1 of the Youth Foiling Gold Cup. My teammates were Dylan Whitcraft, our main trimmer from Thailand, and Ella Beauregard, flight controller. Of the three, Dylan was the only one who had previous experience in this fast, foiling boat. We faced a major learning curve. Fortunately, the format of the 69F YFGC Series provides practice time ahead of the regatta. Unfortunately, our two practice days were not optimal. Mother Nature turned Biscayne Bay into a light wind lake. But let’s consider the format first.

Two days of practice were followed by three days of racing to determine qualifiers for the finals. Qualifying teams then moved on to knockout rounds. In total, my team had five days before the knockout series to learn the boat. First, we learned that a 69F can foil in very light conditions. However, picking the right puff to levitate onto the foils—and then pumping hard enough to maintain flight—is a hard move to time right, and it’s even harder to maintain flight. Trimmer and flight controller both have to constantly roll and press to maintain speed (class rules permit this) and the three of us switched positions frequently for the sake of recovery. We didn’t get much time on-foil before racing began.

I’m at home in the strong winds of San Francisco Bay, so when a squall suddenly brought the wind to 18 knots at the first start of the first day of competition, I was excited. We were on a reaching start to a quadrilateral course in a boat capable of 30 knots and I had about 30 minutes of solid foiling under my belt. What could possibly go wrong? Well …

First, we narrowly averted a collision with a boat capsized to leeward. Then came a gust we weren’t ready for and the discovery that going from 25 knots to zero is an abrupt change. Our flight controller, Ella, performed her next two maneuvers to perfection. First, she went flying out of the boat. Then she popped back aboard, declared “I’m good!” and we were back in the race.

Considerably older and wiser after three days of knockout rounds, we found ourselves in fourth place, qualified to continue to the finals. A win late in the day placed us in second but—and it was a big but.

On the last day, the breeze lightened again. We remained competitive but struggled in the starts.  We made a few mistakes in maneuvers, and our inadequate batten tension was really “messed up” in the words of our friends from the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron. That said, the day had its triumphs: We clocked the fastest daily speed at 26 knots, improved our coordination during tacks and completed a foiling jibe. We had arrived in Miami with a plan to learn as much as we could about the 69F and how to race it, with a goal of setting ourselves up for Act 3 in Newport, Rhode Island, this July. We came away knowing we had exceeded our expectations.

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While the AC75s of the 36th America’s Cup remain shrink-wrapped and idle while the Challenger of Record and Defender draft their protocol, the engineers and designers at Italy’s Persico Marine have been advancing their own Cup afterparty in the form of a 40-foot version of the flying beasts of Auckland, and in late July announced plans to push ahead with a production run of what will be called the Persico Fly40 One Design.

“Persico Marine has thus opened a new market segment targeted at owners, for whom the ‘new normal’ will be a foiler with canting arms – a high-performance, one-design-class monohull conceived for an upwind start, tacking duels and every aspect of the traditional regatta, but at three times the windspeed,” the builder states in its announcement in early August.

The Persico Fly40 is conceived as a 38-foot, 3,527-pound foiling vessel with a designed takeoff in 7 knots of true windspeed. Designed for a crew of 5, Persico says, “the Fly40 can be trailered and moved easily.”

“In the last five months we have dedicated ourselves to achieving an impressive goal: transferring our research and development of the 36th America’s Cup to the market,” says Marcello Persico, president Persico Marine. “In an instant, on the day we saw our AC75s sail for the first time, all our previous accomplishments up to that moment became ‘the past.’ Following the revolutionary innovations of the last edition of the America’s Cup and thanks to the performance of the AC75, a visionary and radical foiling craft, we are witnessing a real change in paradigm: the time is right to raise the regatta field to a new dimension that will allow everyone to experience fly-foiling.”

Structural engineering is provided by Pure Design & Engineering from New Zealand, which also worked with Emirates Team New Zealand; naval architecture and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is led by Caponnetto Hueber, a collaborator with Luna Rossa, the 36th America’s Cup Challenger of Record. To help lead the project, they’ve also tapped Luna Rossa co-helmsman Francesco Bruni.

“By presenting an advanced 40-foot foiler today, we are in a position to play a central role in revolutionizing the market,” Bruni says. “I am sure this project will have great success and am very happy to be part of it. This is a promising moment for the sailing world.”

As with the Persico 69F circuit currently underway, Persico says the Fly40 One Design class will feature an owner-driver styled circuit with Persico providing support and services.

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“The first partner announcement came through Rhode Island’s East Bay Sailing Foundation which operates on the grounds of Bristol YC where, in late July, U.S. SailGP team members will kick off the initiative on the upper reaches of Narragansett Bay with its first foiling camp for local kids and coaches. “Since launching Foiling First we’ve been overwhelmed by the response from the American sailing community,” said U.S. SailGP Team CEO and Driver Jimmy Spithill in a team statement. “We’re looking forward to working with Bristol Yacht Club and East Bay Sailing Foundation and we’re excited to invite more organizations to join. It’s really encouraging to see communities ready to participate in change on and off the water.”

The program, the team says, has three components whereby organizations such as the East Bay Sailing Foundation will build a fleet of foiling boats to train locals with the support of U.S. SailGP Team sailors and coaches who will lead annual multi-day clinics. The partner organization will also then incorporate one diversity-focused organization in their community to work with, supported by Foiling First, to create introductions to the sport of sailing.

“Kids want to learn how to race foiling boats and compete like the pros do,” said Kristin Browne, board chair of the East Bay Sailing Foundation. “At the same time, as a club, we want to contribute to making our sport more inclusive and we’re excited to partner with Foiling First and the U.S. SailGP Team to help begin that change.”

The Foundation will host the first domestic Foiling First: Learn to Foil Camp July 20-21, in cooperation with Melges Performance Sailboats, which will supply six to eight of its Skeeta and Nikka singlehanded scow-like foilers designed by Australian designers Jim and David French. According to Browne, U.S. SailGP sailors Jimmy Spithill, Rome Kirby and Andrew Campbell will lead the clinic next month using boats provided by Melges. For 2022, a patron of the East Bay Sailing Foundation has purchased six boats for the Bristol program.

According to the announcement, Foiling First participants and coaches will also engage in educational workshops with RISE and World Sailing Trust, aimed at educating athletes on racism, social justice, and advancing inclusion in the sport. Interested candidates for the Foil First camp should contact programdirector@eastbaysailingfoundation.org

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Anyone who has taken to a singlehanded foiling craft along the likes of a Moth or Waszp knows full well the exhilaration of liftoff, the silence of flight, and the breathtaking enjoyment of soaring over the surface and whipping through turns. There’s nothing quite like it, and foiling is here and now. As advancements in foiling and composite construction have continued apace, it was only a matter of time before someone came up with a with a slick new twist. That twist is the Vortex Pod Racer, which McConaghy Boats’ director Mark Evans describes as a “half boat, half flying machine that flies above the water at speeds of 30 knots.”

Thirty knots is plenty fast for the average sailor, but this craft is not necessarily for the average sailor, Evans says—not at the outset at least. “I think the learning curve is relatively small,” Evan says. “Of course, it’s a new skillset. I put it down to a little bit like learning drums for your first lesson.

“When you first sail the prototype, your brain tells you to steer the Vortex with the joystick, but within 30 minutes, you are steering with your feet and flying with the joystick.” The other comparison he can draw is jumping out of your family wagon and into a Porsche or any other high-performance car. “Ninety percent of people could drive a Porsche, but where you will take time to do it well is at high speed, and therein lies the fun,” Evans says. “I see this as the sports car on the water.”

And how do we get to a 17-foot, 330-pound sports car on water? That’s easy. In Zhuhai, China, McConaghy’s composite wizards craft carbon fiber and pre-preg foam core to make the pod, wings, torsional beams and wing fairings. They’ve built more than 3,000 foiling Moths, so they certainly know what they’re doing with their materials and autoclave. When it comes to the systems to make it fly, these too have been exhaustively vetted through the prototype phase. The waterfall of controls lines into the cockpit is a necessity.

“There is always positive and negative in any design, and from a simple concept, we try to keep the complexity out of the build,” Evans says, “but we have to introduce some complexity to enable the pilot to fly. With ease of sailing in mind, and with the loads that this Vortex can generate, we had to add certain mechanical systems that give the Vortex the ability to fly itself.”

The pilot, he says, simply trims all the foils through the joystick and steers with the foot pedals. Iceboaters will know the foot-pedal drill and, in fact, it was hard-water sailing that spurred Evans to launch the Vortex. “The inspiration was from watching the intense speeds achieved by iceboats,” he says, “where a simple pod and a mainsail are balanced by two outriggers. Speeds achieved by these contraptions can easily top 40 knots in 10 knots of breeze.”

Racing sailors will agree that ripping around at top speed is plenty cool and fun but, eventually, there will come a time when you need to reality-check your skills and line up with others. The next thing you know, you will want to fleet-race.

“My vision and goal would be to see 50 class boats on a starting line,” Evans says. “At low speeds, the Vortex would be flying at 12-plus knots, and seeing this amount of boats maneuvering at high speeds would be spectacular. In my mind, it would be just as fun or more fun [than] racing your Porsche on a track day.”

There’s an optional $4,000 electronics package developed with McConaghy’s partners at Sailmon, but Evans says they’re not necessary to sail the boat. “It’s simply a sailing aid, giving the pilot normal feedback, like wind direction, true wind speed, heel and more, but it’s no way to link any of the control systems to fly the boat.”

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