Quick Facts
| Entry Point | Waszp — ~$7,000, 10,000+ sailors globally, school fleets available |
| Olympic Class | Nacra 17 — foiling catamaran, mixed crew, Tokyo 2020 debut |
| Pioneer Class | Moth dinghy — open development, first modern foiler, 30+ knots |
| Premier Series | SailGP F50 — 50 knots, the current spectator foiling circuit |
| Extreme End | AC75 — America's Cup, $10M+ per boat, 50+ knots |
Foiling is no longer a single exotic technology confined to experimental boats and America's Cup programs. It is now a spectrum: from a $7,000 club dinghy you can learn on in an afternoon to a $10 million racing machine crewed by professional sailors operating at the outer edge of what physics allows. Understanding the classes — their design intent, their performance envelopes, their costs, and their learning curves — is essential for anyone deciding where to enter the foiling world.
The Moth Dinghy: The Class That Started Modern Foiling
The International Moth is the class most responsible for modern foiling as we know it. The Moth is an open development class with tight restrictions on hull dimensions (3.35 meters long, 2.25 square meters of sail area) but almost complete freedom in construction materials, foil design, and structural approach. That freedom, combined with a community of technically minded sailors willing to experiment, produced the wand-controlled T-foil system in the late 1990s and early 2000s — the breakthrough that made reliable foiling possible.
A competitive Moth is not a boat for beginners. The hull is narrow, the foil geometry is aggressive, and the balance point between flying and crashing is unforgiving. In 12–15 knots of wind, a good Moth sailor can sustain 30+ knots — a speed that puts any mistake at significant consequence. The learning curve is steep even for experienced dinghy sailors, and many take a season before they can reliably tack in foiling mode.
Cost reflects the technology. A new competitive Moth — hull, foils, rig, and fittings — runs $20,000 or more. Second-hand boats are available, but foil technology evolves quickly and older foil packages can be significantly slower than current designs. The Moth fleet is genuinely competitive at international level; it is not a class where money alone buys results, but being on current equipment is a prerequisite for the sharp end of the fleet.
The Waszp: The Moth for the Rest of Us
The Waszp was designed explicitly as the accessible foiling dinghy — the Moth for sailors who want the experience of foiling without the Moth's price point or learning curve. At approximately $7,000 new, it costs roughly a third of a competitive Moth. Its foil geometry is more forgiving, its ride height system is more stable, and it is deliberately easier to sail in displacement mode while learning the controls.
The Waszp's success has been remarkable. More than 10,000 have been built globally, and a significant number of sailing clubs now operate school fleets specifically for introducing foiling to club members. The class has an active racing circuit in Europe, Australia, and North America, and it has become the de facto gateway for sailors entering foiling from conventional dinghy backgrounds.
Performance is genuine: in 12 knots of breeze, a competent Waszp sailor can sustain 20+ knots. It does not reach Moth speeds, but it flies clearly and consistently, and the experience of foiling — the silence, the acceleration, the sensation of the hull lifting clear — is fully present. For most sailors, the Waszp is the right answer to "how do I start foiling?"
The Nacra 17: Olympic Foiling
The Nacra 17 is the Olympic foiling class — a mixed-crew (one man, one woman) asymmetric catamaran that debuted at the Tokyo 2020 Games as the first foiling boat in Olympic sailing history. The transition from planing cat to foiling cat came with a significant upgrade package in 2017–2018 that introduced foiling T-foils and made the Nacra 17 genuinely fast: capable of 25+ knots in 12–15 knots of wind.
The Nacra 17 is a one-design class, which means all boats are identical in hull and foil specification. Racing comes down entirely to sailor skill — foil trim, boat handling, and tactical decision-making. The mixed-crew requirement is one of the more interesting design constraints in Olympic sailing: the boat is intended to be competitive with crews of different physical sizes and gender combinations, and the sail area and foil geometry reflect that.
The Nacra 17 is not a beginner's boat. Entry to the Olympic pathway requires significant catamaran experience and ideally prior foiling experience. But it occupies an important position in the class structure: it is the highest-level production foiling one-design, and sailing it at club or national level provides meaningful preparation for the Olympic pathway.
The SailGP F50: The Premier Spectator Series
SailGP runs on the F50 catamaran — a 50-foot carbon flying machine that is the current benchmark for professional foiling racing. The F50 was purpose-built for SailGP's circuit racing format: short, intense races in harbors and coastal waters where spectators can see the boats from shore. At 50 knots, these boats cover the race course in minutes.
The F50 uses a sophisticated electronic flight control system — the wand approach of the Moth scaled up and made digital. Sensors throughout the boat feed data to computers that adjust foil angle dozens of times per second, maintaining ride height with precision that no human input could match. The sailors control strategy, sail trim, and tactical decisions; the computers keep the boat flying.
SailGP has done more for foiling's public profile than any other development in the sport. The circuit runs in cities worldwide — San Francisco, Chicago, Sydney, Bermuda — with boats close enough to the shoreline for spectators to experience the speed firsthand. Television and streaming coverage has brought foiling racing to audiences who would never attend a traditional regatta.
The AC75: The Most Extreme Foiling Monohull Ever Built
The America's Cup AC75 is the outer edge of what foiling technology has achieved. A 75-foot monohull that sails entirely on foils, the AC75 reaches speeds above 50 knots on race courses designed specifically for foiling. Each boat costs $10 million or more to build and operate, with teams spending multiples of that on design, testing, and development over a four-year campaign cycle.
The AC75 uses canting foil arms — the foils can swing out to windward or leeward, adjusting their position relative to the hull to manage heel and ride height. The flight control systems are the most sophisticated in sailing, and the crews are professional athletes who spend years training specifically to sail these boats. Wind speeds below about 8 knots may not be sufficient for the AC75 to fly at all; above that threshold, they are in another performance category entirely.
The AC75 matters to recreational foiling sailors not as an aspirational goal but as a technology preview. Features that appeared first on America's Cup boats — wand systems, electronic flight control, carbon foil construction — have consistently migrated to production foilers within a decade of their Cup debut.
The UFO, F4, and Other Production Foilers
Below the Waszp and Moth, several manufacturers have developed simpler foiling dinghies aimed at reducing the learning curve further. The UFO Foiler and the F4 Foiling dinghy both use L-foil geometries that are more forgiving than T-foil systems, generating lift that increases with speed without requiring active wand control. These boats fly lower and slower than a Moth or Waszp, but they put the foiling experience within reach of intermediate dinghy sailors.
Some conventional classes have experimented with foil additions — the RS Aero has an optional foil kit that allows the boat to partially or fully fly in strong conditions. These hybrid approaches are controversial within class communities: the foiling kit typically requires significant modification to existing boats and creates a two-tier fleet. But they reflect the broader pressure within dinghy sailing to incorporate foiling technology into established class structures.
Where Foiling Is Heading
The direction of travel is clear: foiling is moving from high-performance dinghies and racing catamarans toward larger boats. Foiling keelboats are under development and in production, bringing foiling dynamics to crew-sailed boats where one-person righting moment is not the limiting factor. Foiling production cruising boats remain on the horizon — the engineering challenges of consumer-grade reliability at foiling speeds are significant — but the trajectory of the technology points that way.
For the recreational sailor in 2026, the foiling entry point has never been more accessible. A fleet of Waszps at a local club, structured school days, and a learning pathway that connects to Olympic and professional sailing — the infrastructure for foiling as a mainstream sailing discipline is in place. The question is no longer whether foiling is accessible; it is where in the foiling spectrum you want to begin.
Ready to Learn?
See the full guide to learning to foil — prerequisites, crash frequency, school options, and what the first sessions actually look like: Learning to Foil →
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Moth and why is it the definitive foiling dinghy for serious sailors? The International Moth is a 3.35-meter skiff-type dinghy that has been the development class for foiling technology since the early 2000s when sailors began fitting hydrofoils to the existing class — the Moth's open development rules allowed continuous innovation that produced the modern T-foil system now used across professional foiling classes. Sailing a Moth at 25–35 knots in 12 knots of breeze represents the highest performance-per-dollar ratio in sailing, but the class demands significant skill — it capsizes immediately without constant input, and most new Moth sailors require 50–100 hours before flying consistently.
What is the Waszp and how does it differ from the Moth for an entry-level foiling sailor? The Waszp is a purpose-designed entry foiling class produced at approximately $7,000 new, with a one-design hull and rig that eliminates the equipment development arms race of the Moth class. The Waszp uses a similar T-foil system to the Moth but with more forgiving behavior — it is slower to capsize, slower to recover from poor technique, and requires somewhat less continuous correction. Most sailors with dinghy experience need 10–20 hours on a Waszp before consistent foiling; Moth sailors coming from scratch typically need 50–100 hours. The Waszp's lower cost and higher accessibility have made it the primary gateway into foiling for clubs and new sailors globally.
What is the Nacra 17 and what makes it the Olympic foiling class? The Nacra 17 is a 17-foot foiling catamaran sailed by a mixed-gender team of two, selected as the Olympic mixed multihull class for Paris 2024. Its T-foil system allows consistent foiling in 10+ knots of wind at speeds exceeding 25 knots in competition. The Olympic development pathway through the Nacra 17 has driven significant investment in coaching, training programs, and class infrastructure that has made it one of the most technically demanding and professionally supported Olympic sailing classes. The boat requires skilled crew communication and weight distribution management that makes it a high-learning-curve but high-reward platform.
What are the AC75 and SailGP F50, and how do they define the professional foiling circuit? The AC75 is the America's Cup class — a 75-foot monohull foiler that races at 40–50 knots, requiring hydraulic control systems and crew of 11 to manage the massive power delivered by its wingsail. The SailGP F50 is a 50-foot foiling catamaran used in the SailGP professional league, capable of 50+ knots in race conditions, sailed by 5-person national teams in short stadium-format races designed for spectator broadcast. Both classes have produced the fastest race sailing in history and have established technical standards — foil design, control systems, flight controllers — that are propagating down to recreational foiling classes.
What safety equipment is required for foiling dinghy sailing? Helmets are mandatory or strongly recommended in all organized foiling class racing and should be considered mandatory for practice — impacts with the hull, mast, foils, or water at 20–30 knots cause head injuries at rates substantially higher than conventional dinghy sailing. Impact vests (buoyancy aids with added foam padding) protect the torso from boom and foil strikes. Rash guards or wetsuits protect skin from the abrasive impact of high-speed water contact during falls. The capsize rate for foiling dinghy sailors is substantially higher than conventional dinghies, particularly in the learning phase, making protective gear investment more important than in any other sailing discipline.