Surfing Into The Unknown: Learning To Hydrofoil

A hydrofoil board, also known as a foil board, is a surfboard with a foil — a lifting surface — that comes off the bottom of the board and sits in the water.

A foil is basically just a solid object shaped in a specific way so that when it encounters a moving fluid or gas, it creates lift. Airplane wings are aerofoils that allow the plane to rise.

In surfing, foil boards have recently become popular, especially through the evangelism of Laird Hamilton, Kai Lenny and a legion of stoked foilsurfers. Hydrofoil boards harness the energy of swells and allow for a different surfing experience, where one hovers above the surface of the water and can ride for much longer or in different conditions. If you saw that strange Fourth of July video of Mark Zuckerberg, you’ve seen hydrofoiling in action.

Some foil boards are electrically powered, with small propellers on the bottom of the foil, while others use the energy of the ocean and a pumping motion of the surfer. Manufacturers have caught on, and there are now multiple varieties of foils and efoils being sold, at a pretty penny.

Yacht Hampton, based in Sag Harbor, rents out luxury boats for day trips and has added on various water sports and other aquatic diversions to their trips — including electronic hydrofoils. We — Express News Group 2021 summer interns Zoe and Sophie — wanted to check it out for ourselves.

One summer morning, we carpooled to Long Beach to meet up with some instructors from Yacht Hampton and give their foils a test surf.

During summer 2021, Express News Group interns Zoe Kava and Sophie Griffin tackled something they had never experienced before: the new recreational water sport and craze, hydrofoiling. With two, very different, levels of experience on the water, this is what they took away from their afternoon with Yacht Hampton.

Zoe: I had never heard of a hydrofoil before Yacht Hampton took Sophie and me out to the Sag Harbor Bay to test out the fancy surfboard. I’m also far from the experienced surfer that Sophie is — I’ve been surfing (in baby-sized waves) once, and the grand total of waves that I have successfully surfed is a whopping … one.

I had done some research on hydrofoiling prior to heading out into the water, which definitely helped to calm my nerves. Though there are several types of hydrofoils, and some rely on waves or “towing” to move, we set out to try an electric hydrofoil board, which simply uses a battery to propel the board. Water sports experts seemed to agree that this type of hydrofoiling is the easiest kind (which is why I was, finally, persuaded to test it out). Unlike surfing, it can be done in a waterbody without waves and is easy enough to learn for people of all ages and athletic abilities.

When I first got out into the water, it took some time to get used to the board and the self-regulated remote that controls the board’s speed. I took several laps simply lying on the board, and then a few more laps kneeling on the board, before I even attempted to stand up.

Once I figured out a comfortable speed (not as fast as Sophie), I was able to stand up on the board — and I didn’t fall off! When I came back onto shore and saw a few photos of myself riding the board, I realized that I wasn’t exactly doing it correctly, and didn’t look as much like a surfer as I thought I did. The speed at which I was going wasn’t nearly enough to lift the board into the air, and my weight was shifted too far backward, so that the wing wasn’t able to pop up out of the water.

Our instructor helped explain exactly what I was doing wrong and gave me some useful tips.

“There’s a lot of physics behind it,” he said. “The faster you go, the more that wing is kind of pushing to get out of the water, and you’ve got to counteract that by standing forward on [the board].”

After correcting my form, it didn’t take long to get the hang of it — with a few more sessions on the board, I’m confident I’ll move from a novice to a hydrofoil expert.

Sophie: I’ve surfed since high school, never with any extreme degree of proficiency, and seen clips of hydrofoiling on social media, so when I heard Zoe and I would be writing this story, I was excited.

But with excitement came confusion — we were going hydrofoiling at Long Beach? In all the videos I’ve watched online, foilers carve lines deep out in the open ocean, or on sizable waves. We were going to surf in the bay, where the “waves” are usually under a foot and pretty much un-surfable?

Nevertheless, I put on my wetsuit and headed out with Zoe.

We met up with our instructors on the beach, and they gave us a briefing on how to operate the electronic propeller with a handheld remote — and what not to do when you fall. The hydrofoil we would be surfing was, thankfully, not a carbon fiber model but a soft-top, semi-inflated one that gained speed from its motor. The instructors gave us life vests and told us to start sitting, then slowly try to kneel, and then lastly to get up. They also told us to start at a lower speed.

Then it was time to get into the water.

Remote fastened to my wrist, I clambered onto the board, starting in water around waist deep. It’s very important to not let the propeller hit the ocean (or bay) floor, so shallow water is unwise.

I slowly began to increase the speed on the board. It was a weird sensation, almost like being on a tiny boat but still so close to the water. I played with the speed a bit and tried to get a sense of how it felt to move out farther from the shore.

I got to my knees and attempted balance. There was a little bit of chop out on the bay, and as I shifted my weight to clumsily turn, I noticed it felt very different if I was moving with or against the current. The first time I fell in the water was around here.

The motor stops when the rider falls off the board or otherwise stops applying pressure to the accelerator button, so every time I fell off, the board just floated where I had left it, waiting for me. I swam back over to it, hauled myself onto the board, and started again.

As I got more comfortable, I could get to my knees quicker and more fluidly, and even attempt standing. What made this tricky was modulating speed at the same time as trying to pop up. If I went too slowly, the board would sink slightly, or my uncentered center of gravity would mess with its positioning in the water. But if I went too fast, I quickly lost my balance and fell into the bay.

Through trial, error and frequent falls, I started to get the hang of it. I would shakily get up to standing, and then start to carve turns around the bay. I messed with the board’s speed, and as I moved faster, the foil would start to rise in the water — this usually challenged my balance so much that I fell, but when it worked, it felt like flying over the surface of the bay.

I went out farther from the shore and played with what it felt like to go against or with the current. I watched beachgoers zip by in the distance. Basically, it was a great time.

I foiled in and hopped off the board to give Zoe a turn.

This version of hydrofoiling felt very different from my surfing experiences. For one, with the motor, you can immediately start to ride and control your speed — unlike with a normal surfboard, where you have to paddle out, wait for waves, and then attempt to catch them, and are beholden to the surf report. This felt like on-demand waves, and I can imagine a very fun day off a motorboat on one.

I, for one, am curious how hydrofoiling will catch on and develop as more people get into it.

Wing foiling, which is like windsurfing with a foil board, is a recent trend. And Kai Lenny, a professional surfer from Hawaii, has foiled some of the biggest waves in the world, at Nazare, and can do backflips off waves on foils.

Who knows what will come next?