Candela 7.5 won the Foiling Week Awards in the Motor Boat category. If the Foiling Week Awards, the first global event dedicated to foiling boat, must record and make clear to everyone the state of the art of foiling, what could be better than a futurist boat absolutely normal in use?
And what’s more, standard production. A bit expensive, but can also be ordered via the internet, availability of orders permitting. The first 10 produced in 2019 have been sold out and 40 are already allocated for 2020.
Who were the competitors in the Foiling Week Awards
For God’s sake, the competitors were respectable. On the one hand Beneteau with his prototype. The French are testing the operation of a 9.70 meters with retractable and electronically controlled foil. A project in which they are not the only protagonists, but also involves other names with experience in navigation raised by foils. SEAir, for example, which designs and manufactures foil systems that can also be applied to existing projects and has accumulated a great deal of information on the development of flight capabilities (we, at the time, tested their prototype rib with foils).
NOVAL designs also design and manufactures electronic systems to lift and lock outboard foils and brackets.
On the other side were the Sino-American catamarans Aquila. A Stars and Stripes project commissioned by MarineMax, one of the largest global dealers of motorboats and realized by the Asian giant Sino Eagle Group, a company that started its business in 1985 building canoes in plastic material and is today one of the world’s largest manufacturers of composite hulls and multiple Olympic suppliers.
These absolutely “normal” cats for aesthetics of shapes and navigation integrate a foil system. They have the advantages of a more efficient way to move even without flying one meter from the surface of the sea. The foils, which connect the two hulls as a bridge, remain hidden below the waterline, but still, provide upward thrust to the Aquila. Compared to a traditional catamaran they are up to 40% more efficient in terms of speed and consumption.
Why Candela won the Foiling Week Motor Boats Award
The Candela won because it is good looking and does everything expected from tomorrow’s boat: he moves with an equivalent 80 horsepower Torqeedo electric outboard and can sail for two hours at 24 knots. And this boat is stable and reactive like a classical boat with good nautical qualities. The point is that only with foils today you can achieve this performance in terms of speed and autonomy using an electric motor. What better way to win the Foiling Week Motor Boat Award? To receive the award, Gustav Hasselskog (CEO founder Candela) awarded by Oliver Gluck, Torqeedo vice president of marketing.
Explanatory: the nominations are selected by Domenico Boffi and Luca Rizzotti, the organizers of the Foiling Week, the event dedicated to foil boating that arrived in 2019 at its tenth edition, which asks the candidates if they wish to be so; in addition, the nominations are accepted by the community and also considers spontaneous nominations without discarding anyone. The choice of the winner is subject to the result of a public vote carried out online.