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Flyboarding: Austin's Newest & Most Ridiculously Awesome Summer Sport

aquafly.com/gallery

With plenty of nearby water, Austin’s always been a great place for lake sports. This year there’s a unique new one to add to your summer to-do list: Flyboarding.  

The new sport uses the discharge from personal watercraft like Jet Skis to pump 1,000 gallons of water per minute through the bottom of a Flyboard strapped to users’ feet. The Flyboard – which looks like a wakeboard with two giant, 55-foot fire hoses attached to it – can turn almost anyone into a superhero capable of flying over 30 feet above the lake surface, according to Aquafly owner Bobby Vance. 

Aquafly on Lake Travis is the only officially recognized Flyboard instruction and distribution center in Texas. Vance says he became involved in the sport after he met Flyboard inventor Franky Zapata on a trip to Europe with his daughter. “It was something we wanted to do initially just as a weekend trip,” Vance says, “and that weekend trip turned out to be quite a bit more.”  

Zapata, a professional Jet Ski racer, invented in the sport in France in 2011 and made the jump to the U.S. in 2012. Vance opened Aquafly shortly after. Vance says that while the sport is in its infancy, “I expect the sport to grow immensely. I think this is just the beginning."

Here’s a video filed at AquaFly demonstrating the sport:

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