Foils: 160 years of failures before the revolution that shatters records

When Éric Tabarly tested his first foils in 1976 at La Rochelle, he racked up one failure after another. The concept? Brilliant on paper — lift the hull to eliminate drag. The reality? Brutal. Appendages too heavy, materials that wouldn't hold up, structures that snapped clean off. It would take more than 150 years from the first patent for it to finally work. And when it worked, it changed everything.

1861-2013: a century and a half of breaking equipment

The story starts well before Tabarly. In 1861, Thomas W. Moyet filed the first patent for a lifting appendage. The idea was brilliant: a submerged profile generating vertical lift, like an airplane wing flipped upside down underwater. Except the idea stayed stuck on paper.

The first successes were motorized. Italian Enrico Forlanini reached 36.9 knots in 1906 with a powered hydrofoil. Twelve years later, Alexander Graham Bell — yes, the telephone guy — pushed a foiling craft to 61.58 knots. Mind-blowing. Except all this worked thanks to engines, not wind.

Wind, as it turned out, fought back. In 1938, Gilruth and Carl's Catafoil managed to fly. At 5 knots. Five. A fast walker does almost as well.

Tabarly persisted. After his struggles in La Rochelle, he fitted foils to his trimaran Paul Ricard and claimed the Atlantic crossing record in 1980. A victory, certainly. But the appendages remained fragile, temperamental, impossible to make reliable over time. The Breton sailor was a visionary — not a materials magician.

Then came l'Hydroptère. Alain Thébault devoted twenty years of his life to it. In 2009, the craft established the absolute world speed sailing record: 51.36 knots over 500 meters. First multihull to break 50 knots. A feat — but on a timed course, in ideal conditions, with an extremely fragile prototype. If you want to experience foiling firsthand, a sail on l'Hydroptère is available through sponsorship on Spencer.

Why a century and a half of failures? Three bottlenecks, always the same.

Materials weight first: impossible to build appendages that were simultaneously light, rigid and strong with steel or aluminum. Lack of simulation tools next — naval architects navigated by intuition, unable to model the complex flows around a foil. And finally (let's be frank), lack of boldness from funders. Who wants to invest millions in tech that breaks on every outing?

2013: the America's Cup changes everything

Everything shifted in San Francisco. The AC72 catamarans of the 2013 America's Cup didn't just fly for a few seconds during a timed run. They flew regularly, stably, controllably, at 45 knots. On the race course. In competition. In front of cameras from around the world.

The shock was immense.

Romaric Neyhousser, naval architect, identifies a triple simultaneous breakthrough. First, materials: "Weight, materials, mastery of composites to make appendages that are both strong and high-performing. Materials lightening was decisive for the AC72." Next, numerical simulation. Finally, the boldness of designers ready to push every limit.

Because the crucial point is this: these boats are no longer sailed by feel. "Advances in 3D simulators taught us how to fly, how to sail," Neyhousser explains. "These boats are not at all intuitively pilotable." We'd moved from the era of the craftsman-sailor to that of the engineer-pilot. A radical paradigm shift.

The 2013 America's Cup didn't just revolutionize the Cup. It made foiling credible in offshore racing. If you can fly at 45 knots in San Francisco Bay, why not in the middle of the Atlantic?

2016-2020: the IMOCA takes flight (and the gaps widen)

The answer came quickly. As early as the 2016 Vendée Globe, 6 IMOCAs started equipped with foils. Four years later, there were 19 out of 33 at the start. Adoption was lightning-fast.

But between the 2016 foils and those of 2020, there's a chasm. Quentin Lucet, architect at VPLP, lays out the numbers: "In 2016, foils at 20 knots of speed lifted about 30% of the boat's mass — about 3 tons — whereas today, the foil has the ability to carry 100% of the boat, more than 9 tons."

The result? The boat lifts off entirely. Only one to two square meters of hull remain in the water. Drag collapses. "So we can afford to carry less sail on the boat," Lucet specifies. Less sail, less heel, more speed. The equation is formidable.

Guillaume Verdier, the architect behind the most successful IMOCAs, sums it up: "With foils, we gained 2.5 knots in four years whereas before we only gained 0.2 knots per edition. It's extraordinary!"

Vendée Globe times collapsed accordingly. 109 days for the first winner in 1990. 74 days for Armel Le Cléac'h in 2016, averaging 15.43 knots. Thirty-five days erased in a quarter century — with most of the gain concentrated in recent editions.

Well. Not everyone made the turn at the same time. Jérémie Beyou hesitated, then converted: "We were quickly able to see that the improvement potential was enormous. The performance of Banque Populaire VIII convinced me that sooner or later, this would be the way forward."

Others made the opposite bet. Vincent Riou, on PRB, stood by his choice to stay without new-generation foils: "The foilers would have to make huge progress to have more chances of winning the Vendée Globe than us." Yann Eliès had opted for reliability over performance.

History proved them wrong.

Because retrofitting is expensive: around 300,000 euros according to Beyou. A sum that widens the gap between well-funded programs and others, transforming the IMOCA fleet into a two-speed race. For those who want to follow these revolutionary speedsters more closely, several IMOCA 60s including Yannick Bestaven's Maître Coq V offer a sailing experience in exchange for sponsorship.

Each class chooses sides

Faced with the foiling wave, every class had to take a position. And the responses are radically different.

In IMOCA, foils have become essential. But the class strictly regulates: 8 m³ volume, 8 m² maximum surface area. A framework designed to contain costs and limit danger. The Ultims followed the same path with giant V-foils adapted to ocean trimarans.

At the opposite extreme, the Class40 made a clean cut: total ban on lifting foils. Carbon tensile modulus is capped at 245 GPa. The message is clear — preserve accessibility, maintain reasonable budgets, prevent technological escalation. A political choice as much as technical. Class40s like Mathieu Claveau's Prendre la mer, agir pour la forêt offer sailing days in return for supporting the project.

Between these extremes, the TF35 offers a fascinating path: democratization through automation. Thanks to an automated flight control system, these small catamarans take off at 9 knots of true wind upwind and 7 knots downwind, reaching 34-35 knots at peak. Foiling made accessible through electronics — a path forward?

As for America's Cup 2027, it concentrates all innovation on appendages. Dan Bernasconi, Chief Designer of Emirates Team New Zealand, explains bluntly: "The speed differences between hulls were minimal. It made sense to concentrate development on foils and reuse the hulls." Result: existing AC75s keep their hulls, but each team gets 3 new wings and 5 flaps to push the limits of flight.

Three foil families dominate today: L-foils on IMOCAs and Figaros, V-foils on Ultims and offshore trimarans, T-foils on AC75s and sport catamarans.

Sodebo Ultim 3 and Gitana 18: when the numbers are dizzying

Current records are mind-boggling. In January 2026, Sodebo Ultim 3 smashed the Jules Verne Trophy: 40 days, 10 hours, 45 minutes and 50 seconds to cover 28,315 miles at an average of 27 knots. Twenty-seven knots average around the world. You can measure the distance traveled since the Catafoil and its 5 knots in 1938.

But the most spectacular is yet to come. The Gitana 18, unveiled at the end of 2025, represents the absolute cutting edge. Y-shaped foils with 5 meters wingspan. A-frame rudders — a revolutionary architecture, never seen before. The goal stated by Charles Caudrelier, its skipper, would make you smile if he weren't dead serious: "Fly very high without ever touching the waves. We hope to be able to fly in 3-meter waves and reach a cruising speed average approaching 40 knots."

40 knots average. Over 55 knots peak. We're talking about an ocean-going sailboat, not a lake prototype.

Ariane de Rothschild, who drives the Gitana project, doesn't back down: "In my family, we have always loved competition, performance and technological disruption. It's about being disruptive, knowing how to take risks, evaluate them and manage them."

The limits of flight (because they exist)

Should we believe foils will solve every equation? No. The limits are real — and sometimes brutal.

Failures remain frequent. A collision with a UFO (Unidentified Floating Object) at high speed, and a carbon appendage can explode. Material fatigue over an 80-day solo circumnavigation remains a problem engineers haven't fully solved.

Piloting is another wall. Without 3D simulators beforehand, it's impossible to master these machines. The forces at play at high speed exceed human correction capacity — sometimes even electronic.

And here, class rules exist for good reasons. The 8 m³ and 8 m² imposed in IMOCA aren't regulatory whimsy: they prevent an arms race that would exclude modest budgets and endanger sailors. The 245 GPa carbon limit in Class40 reflects the same philosophy.

2027 and beyond: how high will it go?

America's Cup 2027 will be the next laboratory. All R&D — foils, flaps, onboard electronics — will be concentrated there. The lessons will inevitably filter down to offshore racing.

The next frontier is clear: fly permanently, even in the heavy seas of the Great South. The Gitana 18 and its targeted 40 knots may be just the beginning. How long before an Ultim pushes these limits even further? To not miss any of these developments and follow the next records in real time, the Spencer calendar lists all the major ocean racing events.

The toughest question remains: how to democratize this technology? The 300,000 euros for an IMOCA retrofit is already a chasm for most projects. The Gitana 18's foils belong to another budgetary universe. While the TF35 and its automated flight show a way, the path to accessibility is still long.

Each class will have to answer the same question: adopt foils and accept cost inflation, automate flight to make it accessible, or outright ban the technology to preserve equal opportunity. There's no wrong answer — only choices of sporting philosophy.

One thing is certain: 160 years after Thomas W. Moyet's patent, foils are no longer a pipe dream. They are the present of competitive sailing. And their future is being written right now — in design offices, shipyards and on the oceans.