With investors like Peter Thiel and Mark Cuban, this company is trying to make boats that travel as fast as planes.

BY ASSOCIATED PRESS

The REGENT Viceroy Seaglider, a winged passenger ferry, glides over the surface of Narragansett Bay on a test run, Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2025, off the coast of North Kingstown, R.I. Photo: AP Photo/Charles Krupa

NORTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. (AP) — The winged passenger ferry gliding over the surface of Narragansett Bay could be a new method of coastal transportation or a new kind of warship.

Its maker, Regent Craft, is betting on both.

Twelve quietly buzzing propellers line the 65-foot (20-meter) wingspan of Paladin, a sleek ship with an airplane’s nose. It looks nothing like the sailboats and fishing trawlers it speeds past through New England’s largest estuary.

“We had this vision five years ago for a seaglider — something that is as fast as an aircraft and as easy to drive as a boat,” said CEO Billy Thalheimer, jubilant after an hours-long test run of the new vessel.

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On a cloudy August morning, Thalheimer sat in the Paladin’s cockpit and, for the first time, took control of his company’s prototype craft to test its hydrofoils. The electric-powered watercraft has three modes — float, foil and fly.

From the dock, it sets off like any motorized boat. Farther away from land, it rises up on hydrofoils — the same kind used by sailing ships that compete in America’s Cup. The foils enable it to travel more than 50 miles per hour — and about a person’s height — above the bay.

What makes this vessel so unusual is that it’s designed to soar about 30 feet (10 meters) above the water at up to 180 miles per hour — a feat that hasn’t quite happened yet, with the first trial flights off........

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