Fairfield bans popular motorized surfboards from some marinas

FAIRFIELD — Motorized surfboards might be gaining visibility along the Long Island Sound, but they won’t be heading into Fairfield’s marinas.

The Parks and Recreation Commission prohibited the recreational equipment, known as eFoils, from the South Benson Marina and Ye Yacht Yard last week, limiting their use to the boating areas where locals launch kayaks and canoes off Fairfield’s shoreline.

Anthony Calabrese, Fairfield’s director of Parks and Recreation, said the commission added eFoils to the town’s hovercraft restriction at Fairfield’s marinas to ensure its rules and regulations accounted for the trending surfboards before they could become a safety issue.

“We’re starting to see them pop up around the sound, so the commission, trying to stay ahead of things, for safety reasons wanted to make sure they had a rule in place before these started popping up in our marinas,” Calabrese said.

Calabrese said Fairfield’s boating areas that would still permit eFoil use are located by the corner of Fairfield Beach Road between Jennings Beach and the Fairfield Beach Club and by the kayak racks near the Jacky Durrell Pavilion.

He said the electric surfboards, which have gained popularity in the Northeast over the past several years, would either violate the marinas’ speed limit or be difficult for boats to spot, creating potential safety issues in a marina setting.

He said riders using the eFoils within the marinas’ speed limit of six miles per hour would need to lay down on the surfboard, out of sight for nearby boaters. Calabrese said riders would need to break the speed limit to ride the surfboard standing up.

The newest product by Lift Foils, one of the leading eFoil retailers, goes up to 30 miles per hour, according to its website.

“We certainly wouldn’t want someone zipping through South Benson Marina on an eFoil,” Calabrese said.

Dale Sandilands said he has offered eFoil sessions and lessons off Fairfield’s launch zones since 2019 as the owner of Leading Edge Water

Sports, which operates out of Fairfield, Milford and Derby, according to its website. He said the business has avoided the marinas and the town’s buoyed-off swim zones, and he hasn’t encountered any issues with police or the U.S. Coast Guard.

Sandilands said his business is the only one in Connecticut affiliated with Lift Foils, which sells two motorized surfboard models for $8,995 and $11,995.