This is kind of interesting. When was the last time we saw a boat technology like this develop into a high dollar one-off novelty item? I came on the scene about the time the spin boats were coming out - were they that way or were there just a bunch of early adopters and "poof" there were spin classes?

You could probably look at the Hobie 18SX as this kind of boat. It was an outlier...an adaptation of an existing platform for the new cutting edge technology. I bet people then were thinking what I'm thinking now..."well, that will put more of our sport out of the reach of the common or new sailor" and "I don't see myself getting into THAT". To some extent, the development and evolution to the spinnaker boats we have today did some of that. Our entry level classes (H16 aside) are now all but non-existent.

The big drawback I see for the foiling sailing is the lake sailing I mostly do. We watched Bora come to "train" on his moth on Lake Keowee (his mother lives in the area) and even he had a really difficult time keeping up with the shifty breeze and spent a lot of time in and out of the water. Short of a whole lot of righting practice, I'm not sure he gained much from the experience. I can't imagine trying to race a foiling cat in our normal conditions (or is that what they said about spinnakers too?) ;-)