Fly Like an Eagle

Sailing at 19 knots in 15 knots of breeze is not an earth-shattering experience any more. I was thinking about that on a perfect late summer day in Narragansett Bay while we were slicing along on the most technologically advanced cruising catamaran I’ve ever seen—the Eagle Class 53. This sculptural, cool silver machine with its concave hard top, sprawling red lounge and clear-coat carbon bar area was created to fly on hydrofoils controlled autonomously by sensors and algorithm-driven computer software.

“Here comes the puff”, called the boat’s captain, Tommy Gonzalez, from the windward steering station. “Ease out just a bit.” I was at the control island, right up front, just behind a compression post under the hard top, trimming the soft, battened aft “flap” of the hybrid wing sail. The forward edge was a silver-painted solid wing straight out of the America’s Cup, controlled by a single “restrictor” line.

We accelerated quickly and smoothly into the low 20s, but we weren’t flying. Those foiling daggerboards were not created yet—the Eagle Class’s multi-stage design process creates both a “skimming” version with arching “C” foils, and the EC 53 Sport, a fully autonomous foiling version with articulating “T” foils. This is meant to be the first luxury sailing foiler on the market, a holy grail of sorts