Are you ready for a Pro eFoil board? Lessons from FoilFest

A lot of eFoilers are now two or three seasons in, comfortable on the board they learned on, and quietly bored. FoilFest 2025 on Lake Jane in Minnesota was the fifth running of the event and the biggest yet, and the single clearest thing that came out of it was how many riders have outgrown the setup they own without knowing what to move to.

Who can get up on a Pro board, and who cannot

One Pro board with a race setup on it spent most of the day being lent to people who had never ridden one. The split between those who managed it and those who did not was predictable before they hit the water. The tell was in the briefing: riders who nodded along without really listening did not get up, and kept trying to launch it the way they launch a big board, which does not work. The ones who listened, took the instruction about how much speed they needed, and were honest that they wanted something faster and harder carving, mostly got it. Their feedback afterwards was consistent: fast, slippery, agile, and clearly capable of more with time on it. A Pro board is not for riders who want to go slow, or who are nervous about speed on the surface.

Why racing makes you better, and what the Flush is

The argument made for racing is a good one. On a course you have to turn where you are told rather than when it feels right, and that converts you from a reactive rider into a proactive one. That is why time on a course improves technique faster than free riding does. The new addition to the home course is a flush: three gates set close together that force you to whip between them at the highest speed you can carry. It is borrowed straight from alpine slalom, where the tight agility sections were the best part of the discipline.

What the brands agreed to send

The other headline is that the major brands responded. Lift approved a Lift5 Pro demo in yellow along with a Lift X, SiFly offered to send a Stellar X, and Glyde Watersports, the local Flite dealer, offered further time on the Ultra L2 with setups geared towards speed and performance. The premise of the Integrity Trials is simple: ask each brand for its highest performance, most nimble board, and ride that. There was also a first go on an unshrouded Ultra with a smaller wing, borrowed from another rider at the event, which made a strong impression, and a genuinely unmanageable ride on a heavy demo board fitted with a 38 inch mast.

Marketing that makes the sport look boring

The last stretch is a complaint aimed squarely at the industry. Advertising that shows a hunched, wobbling rider going slowly in a straight line, then slows the footage down further, is the opposite of exciting, and it has now had several years to work. Carving and speed are what make an eFoil look worth owning, and the sentiment offered here is blunt: seeing that marketing first would probably have prevented this purchase happening at all. With more riders capable of riding hard, the argument goes, the perception of the sport changes on its own.

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