Pump Foil

No wind, no waves: just legs, a dock and a wing

16 boards · 7 brands · 32 sizes

Pump foiling is flying a hydrofoil board on flat water with no wind, wave or motor, using only the rider's legs. Riders usually jump from a dock or pontoon onto a tiny board and keep it airborne with a steady rhythmic pumping motion. It started as a party trick on lakes and harbours and now has endurance records and a world cup.

A typical pump foil board, 1053 by 424 mm
the typical outline: every board’s shape averaged at the median length and width

The typical board

The typical pump foil board is 1053 × 450 mm, 13 L, with a square tail and its wide point ahead of centre.

900–1346mm long · median 1053

408–500mm wide · median 450

8.4–30litres · median 13

2.4length over width, median · derived

Ranges hold the middle 80 % of every size listed · tails: square tail 8, round tail 7, rounded pin tail 1

How It Rides

What moves it

The run or jump from the dock gives the starting speed. After that, each pump pushes the board down and then unweights it, which swings the wing's angle of attack up and down, roughly between 0 and 5 degrees. The lift and drag forces on the oscillating wing then point slightly forward, and that is the thrust. An EPFL model of a 70 kg rider finds stable riding at about 3.5 m/s (12.6 km/h) at roughly 1.65 pumps per second. The front wing carries about 78% of the load and makes about five times the thrust of the rear wing, while the rear wing keeps the pitch stable.

Reading the shape

A pump board is not meant to float the rider, only to stand on and carry the foil. That is why the drawings show tiny, flat, stubby planks: Starboard's pump board is 95 x 41.5 cm, 11 L and under 2 kg, the same thickness all over for stiffness, with a slightly concave deck and a little nose rocker to bounce off touchdowns. Nicolas Iten set his records on a 95 x 32 cm Indiana Hydroskate. Lightness and stiffness matter because every gram is lifted on every stroke. The foil does more of the work than the board: guides suggest front wings of 1,700–2,000 cm² or more for learning, masts of 70–85 cm, and boards of about 3'10"–4'6" (40–55 L) for beginners down to 2'10"–3'6" for experts.

How to read any board: length and width, wide point, tails, rails, rocker

Wind

none needed

Water

flat water: lakes, harbours, rivers, calm bays

Worth knowing

You need a dock, pontoon or boat to start from, and enough depth for a 70–85 cm mast.

The Rack

Every pump foil board, shortest to longest, one scale · from the Axis Dock Carbon (880 mm) to the Slingshot WF-T V2 (1346 mm)

All 16 in the catalogue

Good To Know

  1. On 29 November 2021 at Stanmore Bay, Auckland, Hugo Wigglesworth jumped from an inflatable dinghy and pumped for 17 min 15 s, nearly doubling his earlier record of just over 10 minutes. His heart rate averaged 176 bpm and peaked at 199. [1]

  2. In September 2022, on Flathead Lake, Montana, Keaton Fischer pumped for 23 min 5 s on an AXIS PNG 1310 wing. He covered 6.15 km at an average of 15.9 km/h. [2]

  3. On 25 May 2024 Swiss former inline-marathon skater Nicolas Iten pumped 54.8 km nonstop on Lake Sempach in 4 hours 2 minutes. He had eaten a Snickers bar and two bananas. Two weeks earlier he had set a record of more than 39 km in 2 h 39, which Jérôme Baudoux then pushed to 44 km. [3][4][5]

  4. Speed over distance: on 31 August 2025 Iten pumped 20.1 km in one hour on Lake Sempach. He said a ride like that takes about 5,000 near-perfect repetitions, and any error means a fall. [6]

  5. Pumping works like a flapping wing. An EPFL model finds that the wing's pitch stays almost steady at about 2.3° while the board heaves up and down at about ±0.16 m/s. The rider's push alternates at about 45% of body weight. [7]

Watch And Read

Who Makes Them

Where And When

Where to watch it

  • Lake Sempach (Sempachersee), SwitzerlandNicolas Iten's home water and the site of his 54.8 km and 20.1 km-in-an-hour records.
  • Flathead Lake, MontanaWhere Keaton Fischer's 23-minute record was set in 2022.
  • Stanmore Bay, AucklandHugo Wigglesworth's 17-minute record in 2021, started from a dinghy.

Where it came from

Dock-start pumping appeared around 2018, once large low-speed wings from SUP and surf foiling made it possible to stay up on flat water. Riders first used bungee or winch assists, then simply jumped on and pumped. Records followed from 2021, and organised contests from 2024.

More disciplines

Sources

  1. [1]

    17 minute pump record by Hugo Wigglesworth

    Foiling Magazine, 2021-11-29 · tier 2 · video

  2. [2]

    Foil Pump Record AGAIN

    Stand Up Magazin, 2022-09 · tier 2 · article

  3. [3]

    Nicolas Iten breaks the Pumpfoil Long Distance Record again!

    Indiana Paddle & Surf, 2024-05-29 · tier 3 · manufacturer

  4. [4]

    New Pumpfoil World Record!

    Indiana Paddle & Surf, 2024-05-11 · tier 3 · manufacturer

  5. [5]
  6. [6]

    Pumpfoiling: Sportlehrer knackt erneut Weltrekord auf Sempachersee

    Luzerner Zeitung, 2025-09-01 · tier 1 · article

  7. [7]

    A minimal model of pump foil dynamics

    arXiv (Eunok Yim, François Gallaire, EPFL), 2026-03-15 · tier 1 · article

  8. [8]

    2026 Pump Foilboard

    Starboard · tier 3 · manufacturer

  9. [9]

    Pump Foil Board Size Guide 2026

    The Quiver, 2026 · tier 3 · article

  10. [10]

    How to Dockstart a Foil: a step-by-step pump foiling guide

    MACkite Boardsports Center, 2026-05-22 · tier 3 · article