Home » Latest » Outdoors » Hydrofoil Surf Heaven in Hawaii

Hydrofoil Surf Heaven in Hawaii

5

InfoSearched 80 0 Outdoors

9.2

SaveSavedRemoved 0

An Australian foiling world champion trades breaking waves for open ocean glide off Oahu’s North Shore.

Keahi de Aboitiz, the Australian multi-discipline waterman known for chasing wind, waves and foil equipment across every corner of the Pacific, released “Hydrofoil Surf Heaven in Hawaii” in early 2020, and it’s less a highlight reel than a working demo. Rather than paddling for a breaking shoreline, de Aboitiz spent an extended tow-in session skimming unbroken open-ocean swells along Oahu’s North Shore in glassy, windless conditions. The whole point of the footage is the glide — how far a hydrofoil can carry a rider across a rolling Pacific swell line without ever touching down.

• De Aboitiz filmed an extended tow-in hydrofoil session on Oahu’s North Shore in pristine, glassy conditions, riding unbroken open-ocean swells instead of breaking shoreline waves.
• His setup centered on a JP Australia prototype 4’0″ tow foil board paired with a NeilPryde Medium Slim front wing on a 75 cm carbon mast.
• De Aboitiz singled out the frictionless, sustained-flight sensation of the setup — sustained glide and maneuverability on open rollers without dropping off the foil’s plane.

Tow-In Foiling Redefines Water Sports

Traditional surfing lives and dies by the wave breaking — a rider gets a few seconds of usable face before whitewater ends the ride. Hydrofoiling removes that constraint almost entirely. Because the foil lifts the board’s hull clear of the water’s surface, drag drops off dramatically, and a rider can keep pumping across the back of an unbroken swell long after a conventional board would have stalled out. That’s exactly what de Aboitiz set out to document: instead of hunting for a lineup with breaking peaks, he towed into open Pacific rollers off the North Shore and simply kept gliding, swell after swell, without ever needing the wave to actually break.

It’s a different discipline than the pumped-foil surfing more casual riders attempt closer to shore. Tow-in access let de Aboitiz reach swells further outside, in deep water untouched by reef or shoreline interference — the kind of glassy, uninterrupted rollers that rarely get ridden at all because they never break into a surfable face.

The Prototype Gear Under the Hood

The session doubled as an equipment test. De Aboitiz rode a JP Australia prototype 4’0″ tow foil board, paired with a NeilPryde Medium Slim front wing mounted on a 75 cm carbon mast — a combination built specifically for high-speed, open-ocean tow work rather than the shorter, punchier pop-up foiling done in whitewater closer to the beach. The medium-slim wing profile is designed to trade some low-speed lift for a cleaner, faster glide once a rider is up and flying, which lines up with exactly what de Aboitiz was chasing on those long Pacific rollers.

Getting into that glide on an unbroken swell is a totally different, frictionless feeling of speed — you’re not waiting on the wave to break, you’re just flying.

That’s the sensation de Aboitiz built the whole session around: sustained speed and maneuverability without ever falling off the foil’s plane, something a standard surfboard simply can’t replicate no matter how clean the swell is. Waterman circles have watched foil gear evolve fast over the past few seasons, from short-board pump foiling to the kind of tow-assisted, deep-water riding on display here — not unlike how other foil-adjacent projects, including the electric flying craft covered in Jetson One’s official launch, have chased that same stable, lifted-off-the-surface feeling from a completely different angle.

Oahu’s North Shore as a Proving Ground

The North Shore’s reputation is built on winter swell and heavy reef breaks, but the glassy, wind-still conditions de Aboitiz filmed in are just as valuable for this kind of test — clean, unbroken rollers with no chop to disrupt the foil’s lift. It’s the same stretch of Hawaiian coastline that’s produced generations of watermen pushing board sports forward, a lineage that includes the pool-based training regimens documented in Laird Hamilton’s revolutionary pool workout. De Aboitiz’s session fits that same tradition: using Hawaii’s water as a lab for whatever the next piece of foil equipment can do.

For de Aboitiz, a rider who’s collected world titles across multiple board disciplines, this wasn’t a one-off stunt — it’s the kind of prototype run that typically feeds straight back into gear that ends up in production. If the JP Australia 4’0″ tow board and NeilPryde Medium Slim wing perform the way this footage suggests, expect that exact combination, or something very close to it, showing up on North Shore lineups the next time the swell goes glassy.