After a very fruitful initial collaboration in the C-Class of the 2013 Little America’s Cup, the Swiss company Hydros expressed a desire to work once again with VPLP. The new remit was to design the HY-X, a flying motorboat featuring retractable foils which lift her hull about a metre out of the water.

VPLP designed the hull, lifting surfaces and their associated control systems in collaboration with the design firm Ladida and engineers from Hydros and JM Koncept.

And the prototype resulting from the simulator studies ticks all the boxes: performance, fuel savings of 30%, superlative handling and a comfortable ride. Nothing now stands in the way of this foiling concept being applied to many other types of motor vessel.