It was only in the last few years that I began to ask myself how close the Cape Lookout Lighthouse was to Beaufort/Morehead City/Fort Macon. If you don’t have a boat, the trip from the Beaufort Hotel to the Cape Lookout Lighthouse would take almost two hours (34.7 miles).

But, as the crow flies, or if a seagull would fly straight, the distance is only 8.5 miles between the hotel and the lighthouse. I’m not sure if a small watercraft could navigate an almost straight course between the two locations, but certainly the trip would be much shorter than 34 miles, and take a lot less time.

[NOTE 09/24/22]: The above image was unexpected, especially if you know how many images I had taken and zoomed in on the little blip on the horizon (photo above the above) that I came to know was the Cape Lookout Lighthouse. To see that they actually could zoom in and get a recognizable image of the Lighthouse from about 9 miles away is amazing. [end note]

A few weeks ago, I was looking at the webcam view from the Beaufort Hotel (on WRAL TV5), as shown above. I think it was a Saturday morning about 11 am, and there were several small watercraft heading easterly down this channel. I think I was doing something on my computer, but at some point I looked up at the webcam view. Something different appeared at the bottom right of the screen. There was what appeared to be a single individual, standing upright above the water, travelling incredibly fast (compared to the rest of the boats on the water), and producing little to no wake. The person quickly passed the nearby vessels, and then relatively quickly passed all visible vessels and disappeared at the end of the channel.

I sat in my “easy” chair rehearsing what I had just seen. Person upright, no visible vessel beneath them, moving incredibly fast, and producing almost no wake. I said to myself, “Surely someone might ask, ‘did you really see what you just thought you saw.'” I sat there another few minutes, and then I look at the view and here comes the person back in the opposite direction, disappearing to the right of the webcam view heading back toward the Beaufort, NC waterfront.

Okay, so now I started to google for “fastest single person watercraft” which pulled up some pontoon boats (not what I would think was very fast, but they are small). It wasn’t a skier being pulled behind a boat. It wasn’t a fast moving canoe or kayak, or even a jet-ski (which produce an incredible wake). So, now my thoughts turn to something I saw in a James Bond movie (Thunderball) back in the late 1960s. The “Disco Volante,” was a fairly large vessel, used by Bond’s nemesis in acquiring a couple of nuclear bombs. And, at some point, the vessel drops the tail end of the ship, and becomes a fast moving hydrofoil. So now my google search included the term “hydrofoil”.

Sure enough, I quickly found articles about “efoils”. Only a few years in development. Surprisingly, they are electrically operated (a battery pack in the board). They have a fin, motor/propeller, and wings beneath the surface of the water.

It does look like fun! But, it definitely looks like it can be dangerous, and could cause serious injury. The fin could snag on a hidden obstacle beneath the surface of the water, or you could just lose your balance on the board and fall in the “wrong” location. The boards currently cost about $12K, which make them a rich man’s toy, but I could see the prices coming down greatly in a few years. But, still this toy is inherently dangerous, and I’m not sure how long the “wow” factor will last. I don’t see an easy way to make this craft less dangerous.