There’s a moment, about fifteen minutes into your first session on Lake Como, when something impossible happens.
The drag disappears. The noise drops to near silence. And the hull of the boat you’re piloting rises completely clear of the water. You are no longer floating. You are flying.
This isn’t a jetski and not a speedboat either. The Foilone Pegasus is an electric hydrofoil. A machine engineered from first principles to do one thing: lift itself off the surface and fly above it. To understand why that feeling is so unlike anything else on the water, you need to understand how it actually works. Because once you do, you’ll realize the engineering isn’t just clever, it’s the reason the experience is unforgettable.
Two foils. One line. Total control.
Beneath the hull of the Pegasus run two hydrofoils, one at the front and one at the rear, aligned in a straight line beneath the centerline of the boat. Think of them like underwater wings. Horizontal surfaces that generate lift as water flows over them, exactly the way an airplane wing generates lift in air.
As the Pegasus accelerates to around 10 knots (19kph/11.5mph), those wings start doing their job. Water moving over the horizontal surfaces creates upward pressure. The hull rises. And suddenly, the boat that was gliding through the water is gliding above it instead.
This two-foil, in-line configuration isn’t just elegant, it makes the craft agile, responsive, and perfectly suited to a single rider at the controls. Every input you make is felt immediately.
The front foil does more than you think
Here’s where it gets interesting, and where the Pegasus diverges from almost every other watercraft ever designed.
Traditional boats steer from the rear. A rudder at the back pushes the stern (back of the boat) left or right. That works fine when your hull is in the water. But when you’re flying above it? Rear steering makes the craft dangerously unpredictable.
The Pegasus solves this elegantly: it steers from the front.
The front foil has a large vertical surface, essentially an underwater fin, that acts as the primary steering mechanism. You control it through two handles in the cockpit that mimic bike handlebars exactly: push with one hand, pull with the other. With the steering foil at the front, lateral balance becomes intuitive, almost instinctive, the same muscle memory used to learn to ride a bike as a kid.
When the boat begins to tip to one side, you steer the front foil back underneath the hull to correct the lean. When you want to turn, you initiate a slight countersteer to lean into the direction you want to turn to, then balance the boat in the curve. The more you lean, the tighter the turning arc.
It’s not a skill you have to think about for long. It becomes second nature within minutes.
How it stays at the right height - without a computer
One of the most common questions people ask is: how does the boat know how high to fly?
The answer is beautifully mechanical. There is no computer managing it. No fly-by-wire system. No electrical sensor feeding data to an algorithm.
Instead, the Pegasus uses a mechanical surface sensor, called a wand, connected directly to the horizontal flap on the front foil. When the boat rides too low, water pressure pushes the wand back, which increases the flap’s angle of attach and generates more lift, pushing the hull higher. When it flies too high, a bungee pulls the wand forward, reducing the flap angle, reducing lift, and bringing the boat back down.
The rear foil works differently, and just as cleverly. It’s a passive wing with no actuators, no electronics, and no manual input required. Instead, it self-regulates through pure geometry. At low speed, the back of the boat sits lower in the water, which puts the rear wing at a steeper angle of attack, generating more lift and helping bring the stern up. As speed increases and the stern rises above the front foil’s height, that angle decreases, reducing lift and pushing the rear back down to its intended flying height. The boat is constantly finding its own equilibrium, pivoting around the front foil like a seesaw that always finds level.
Together, the wand-controlled front flap and the passive rear wing form a completely self-regulating system, no computers, no software, no electronic intervention of any kind. Just physics, geometry, and engineering working in concert. It’s the kind of solution that makes you stop and think: someone spent a very long time working this out, and then realized the most elegant answer required no electronics at all.
The throttle under your foot
Propulsion is equally direct. The Pegasus is fully electric, powered by a motor that drives the boat forward in near silence. Throttle is managed through a pressure-sensitive pedal under your right foot, exactly like the accelerator in a car. Press gently and the boat eases forward. Press harder and the foils load up, lift begins, and the hull starts its rise.
The part no technical explanation can capture
You now understand, mechanically, why the Pegasus flies. Front foil steering. Mechanical height control. Inline dual foils. Bike-handlebar lateral balance. Electric throttle underfoot.
But here’s what none of that explains:
The thrill when the hull lifts. The sudden disappearance of drag. The feeling that the rules of what a boat can do have just been suspended.
The Pegasus was built to be flown, and that’s exactly what we are offering! On Lake Como, one of the most stunning stretches of water in the world, surrounded by the Alpine foothills, and coached in real time through a headset by someone who will have you foiling within your first session.
You don’t need experience. You don’t need a background in boating or watersports. You just need to show up for the best story you’ll bring home from Italy!
Foilone operates from Hotel Nautilus on the eastern shore of Lake Como, May through September 2026. Sessions are limited.
100% OF NEW PILOTS HAVE EARNED THEIR WINGS
You arrive having never flown above water. Two hours later, you leave with a Flight Certificate, a Pilot Cap, and a story that starts: “You know that trip we took to Lake Como…”
Most experiences are beautiful. Earn Your Wings is unforgettable.
