I agree, it's tough to swallow at first glance, but the video makes it very clear what's going on. This is not a high speed maneuver by any means. I'd guess she's doing maybe 3 or 4 knots, and the pic was taken when she was closest to actually "planing" if she ever was at all. Most of the time she was up to her ankles in water, and each ride lasted 15-20 seconds max.. The flag is drooping because it was probably a dead calm day or maybe there was a slight tail wind. Still, it's fun to think about the possibilities of hooking up my buddy's four seater pedal/prop catamaran to a small skiier ;-).

As to the MIT guys, they've been dormant since the DuPont prize days in the early 90's, but the Japanese recently established the multi-rider 100m Sprint world record with a tandem hydrofoil named Super Phoenix. How does 18.67 knots in an HPB sound?!? See pic attached.

Also, we'll be shooting at the 24 Hour Distance Record in Sparta, Wisconsin on August 16-17, with another HydroBowl series of races on the Saturday afterward. Anyone with a tandem kayak who can stay awake for a long time could easily best the record last year (54 miles I think) which was established by a boat that stripped its gears about six hours into the race but limped along for the duration. John Howard's solo record in the Pedalos will be a bit tougher (104 miles), but he was out of the boat for four of the 24 hours, and I've heard stories of kayaks, canoes, and rowers going further in the same or less time. That's not quite apples-to-apples though, as we run on a calm lake in an oval course to take environmental factors out of it, so I'd invite any of the endurance kayakers on the list to give it a shot!

...Ron