The Appletree Zapple Foildrive Trench Board

Its been a big couple of years for Foildrive - the Gen2 was and has been arguably the most exciting thing to have happened in foiling since its introduction. There are other brands available, but no real competition has arrived as of yet in those two years and Foildrive is still leading the charge. Give it another 6-12 months and we may finally see decent offerings from Duotone and Flite - but for now, its all we know.

To further fuel the Foildrive market, brands started playing with ideas of incorporating the units into the boards and masts to reduce drag and increase control and feel over the motor weight. While a lot of these specialist board offerings have come from custom board builders, theres still been a surprising lack of integration from the bigger brands. Appletree are as far as we know still the only production board company with an offering available everywhere and the Zapple has been our best selling board in 2025 so far, far out selling even our most popular every day wing boards.

Initially designed with almost the sole purpose of simply hiding the battery unit in the board to great a better release off the water while starting - it quickly became obvious this was far from its only positive attribute. The drag reduced by not having the unit under the board made touchdown issues more of a thing of the past and a lot less of an issue. Reducing the thickness of the board by removing foam under your back foot became one of the most important factors behind the Zapples success. Not only giving tonnes more control over the foil system underneath, it also removed a great amount of the pitching moment found in the transition between motoring and wave powered riding. With a 'non trenched' board, once the motor was disconnected from the water on the wave, the rider has to shift weight in their feet to counteract the pitching effect. this can be difficult to predict and takes a lot of skill to overcome comfortably. The Zapple makes this a doddle. The effect is still there, but its heavily reduced. 

Which size do I need?

Theres only 3 sizes. 54L, 46L and 38L. For most people it will be obvious what size they need to get based on what they have been using previously. To us, its fairly straight forward. If you're a comfortable rider looking to push riding in waves or you're on the lighter end of weight - its the 38L. If you're on the heavier side, maybe a little less confident or you're just starting out with your Foildriving its the 54L. For everyone else, and arguably the bulk of customers looking for the allrounder - its the 46L

The Drawbacks

Are you ready to spend money on a specific Foildrive board? Yes, you can wing on it and we're sure you can prone surf it - but you're not likely to. Its a Foildrive specific board and will be used as such. Still - Foil assist is becoming a massive discipline in itself, and for those folk spending more and more time on their systems - this won't be much of a conversation at all, it makes for better Foildrivering. 

Theres very little space either side of the battery unit, meaning you can't unclip and remove the battery without removing the unit as a whole. We don't see this as too much of an issue, it takes approx 3 minutes to change everything over and head back out - but some people get frustrated by it still, usually when they're headed out for 3/4/5 battery sessions.Foildrive also have a new set of split bolts that can also help in this process to speed things up. 

All in all, for the advantages these boards bring, we would say its worth 3 minutes of faffing while having a breather mid session. We may well see these designs innovate over the coming months and years, but for now we're extremely happy to have such a great board made readily available for us and our UK customers!