It is built of rip-stop nylon and has no rigid spars. He intends to manufacture and market the kite. In the moderate winds prevailing at Portland, the craft flew fully foilborne, under perfect control, and made timed runs near 20 kts. In practice runs outside the official course, the boat topped estimated speeds of 25 kts. For his elegant design work and demonstrated performance, Durand and his team were awarded the Amateur Yacht Research Society's prestigious design prize.
All attitude controls are via cables, gears and chains leading inside the mast.
Each takes advantage of the inclined rig to minimize heeling moment, and each has two freely pivoting hulls to control placement of their center of lateral pressure. Both sailed quite reliably and controllably, but are still in proof of concept stages and not optimized for high speed. Everything needed to begin UpSkiing is included in their UpSki package. Huff and Stanford, who hold patents on the innovative venting method and control system on UpSki, claim impressive performance for their device. UpSki is capable of pulling a large man on level, hard snow in wind light as 6-7 mph.