10 August 20212:111,117 views on YouTubeWatch on YouTube
It is the first question anyone asks when they see one of these boards, usually while watching a clip of something going badly. The honest answer given here is that eFoiling is fun, it is genuinely good exercise, and it is relatively safe to ride. It is also very easy to make look terrifying if you set out to.
The footage is staged, and openly so
This short is a demonstration of exactly that. It was put together by a professional special effects artist working with a novice surfer, and the warning attached to it is unambiguous: do not try any of it. What you are watching is a constructed scene, not a record of a normal session, and knowing that up front is the point of the episode rather than a spoiler.
What is real and what is not
The tell is in the manoeuvre itself. Sliding past the back of a boat is ordinary enough when wake surfing, and riders do it constantly. Crashing into the side of one is not something that happens on unpowered boards, and it is not something anybody should be aiming for. One thing in the scene is real, though, and it is worth knowing if you are new to the sport: an eFoil has no trouble keeping pace with a wakeboard boat, and it can pass one.
The takeaway for a new rider
Judge the sport by what riding actually looks like, not by the frames that were engineered to make you flinch. The risks in eFoiling are real and mostly boring: the foil and the propeller underneath you, other water traffic, and your own decisions about how hard to push. None of them look like this clip, which is exactly why it needed a special effects artist to make.
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