Ferrari Hypersail: a 100-foot full-foiling ocean racer powered by wind and sun

What it is

Ferrari Hypersail is a 100-foot full-foiling monohull being built for ocean racing, with the launch scheduled for March 2027 in Livorno. The project, conceived and presented in Maranello, has now set up its operational hub inside Azimut Yachts’ Livorno facility. Azimut is acting as the technical partner for the program.

The boat is designed to lift completely out of the water on foils during fast sailing, cutting hydrodynamic drag sharply and pushing top speed to 100 km/h. The rig carries a 35.5-meter mast and 462 square meters of sail area, which does the heavy lifting for propulsion at speed.

The renewable energy setup

The propulsion story here is wind over sails, but the systems story is about energy self-sufficiency. The team plans to install three wind turbines and 100 square meters of high-efficiency solar cells over the surfaces of the hull. The solar array is quoted at roughly 20 kW of output.

That generation feeds high-voltage batteries that manage the energy flows for the systems below deck, including the moving appendages required for active flight control. The result, as the team frames it, is what Technical Team Leader Marco Guglielmo Ribigini calls the first flying monohull for ocean racing to be fully self-sufficient from an energy standpoint.

What is actually new vs. iterative

The genuinely new element is not the foiling itself: full-foiling ocean racing monohulls exist in the IMOCA and Ultim classes. The claim worth paying attention to is the renewable-only energy architecture. There is no diesel generator in the picture. Battery charging comes from the solar array, the three wind turbines, and the crew’s own physical input.

That crew input is routed through an unusual system called Winch by Wire, which converts human power directly into the winch adjustments used for sail trim and other on-deck movements. Below-deck actuation, including the active foiling control, runs on energy recovered from the renewables and stored in the high-voltage battery.

The ABB partnership

Ferrari Hypersail has closed a technological partnership with ABB, leaning on more than 25 years of the company’s experience in direct current (DC) technologies and advanced power systems. ABB will support marine power, DC technology, intelligent energy management, and advanced electrical systems, with the stated goal of maximizing performance and resilience of the onboard renewable energy systems in extreme ocean conditions.

Project Leader Enrico Voltolini frames the requirement plainly: the boat runs entirely on renewable energy and must be self-sufficient for consecutive weeks in the harshest ocean environments on the planet. ABB’s involvement is positioned beyond the racing program too, as a high-performance testbed for next-generation power systems across maritime, data center, and renewable infrastructure sectors.

The Livorno hub and the support boat

The Livorno facility will house the project team’s offices, engineers, and shore team, plus gymnasiums and athletic preparation areas. It also includes specialized labs for hydraulic, electrical, and mechanical components, along with 3D-printing space. Direct access to the Tyrrhenian Sea gives the program varied sea conditions for a continuous test campaign, while staying close to Maranello for engineering and design exchange with Ferrari.

As technical partner, Azimut Yachts will build a custom Azimut Fly 72 to accompany Hypersail during testing and sea operations. The support boat will assist during the first flight trials and later provide monitoring and hospitality during outings.

The caveat

The 100 km/h top speed and 20 kW solar figure come from the project team, and the boat has not yet launched. Everything about the renewable-only architecture is being validated for the first time in a multihull-adjacent, weeks-long ocean racing context. The honest read: the foiling platform itself is proven technology, but the all-renewable energy backbone, self-sufficiency over weeks, and the Winch by Wire deck systems are the parts that still have to prove themselves on the water once the hull leaves Livorno in 2027.