During the summer of 2020 my friend and I worked for a professional sailor in the Detroit area in his early stage startup to build an electric hydrofoiling boat. Over that summer, we built a prototype of an autonomous hydrofoiling system by modifying an existing Nacra 17 hull, which achieved over a minute of stable autonomous airtime by the end of the summer.
Our work from that summer has lived on in the form of Michigan Electric Boats, as my friend went on to co-found that project team. Our work from the summer was the start of the team’s first boat, which won 2nd place in the 2021 Promoting Electric Propulsion competition.
(7/21/2024 - need to add more information here!)