Boating's Future Is Foiled-and That's a Good Thing

From racing sailboats to weekend cruisers, foils represent the industry's next sea change. But what's it actually like onboard, above the waves at high speed?

- Michael Verdon

AS THE SAILGP F50 race boat suddenly tacks, the G force pins me inside the aft steering station. Working against gravity, the US team's driver, Jimmy Spithill, and four other sailors somehow sprint 6m between the twin hulls to a mirror-image station on the starboard side. The catamaran pivots hard on its foils, flying 1.8m above the water. What sounds like a jet overhead is actually the boat responding as the 15-knot gusts hit the 'wings'-the stiff 29m-high sails designed as airfoils-and the 50ft catamaran accelerates to three times the speed of the wind.

The F50 is techy, edgy, exhilarating and, without the right skipper, dangerous. "A hot-rod version of the AC50" is how naval architect Paul Bieker describes it, referring to the 50ft catamaran raced in the 2017 America's Cup on which this one is based. Bieker's studio helped design the foils for the America's Cup boat, but the SailGP design is far faster, having just broken the 97km/h redline, thanks in part to thinner carbon-fibre L foils with the same bending stiffness and strength as steel, but at about a fifth of the weight.