The hottest ticket one could score at the Annapolis Powerboat Show last weekend was not a ticket at all, but to have your name written in a small black notebook by an electric boating expert from Stockholm.

Journalists, tech entrepreneurs, retired physicists, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Police: Everyone wanted a chance to take a test “flight” on the Candela C-8, the Swedish electric hydrofoiling boat making its American boat show debut in Annapolis. By 3 p.m. Oct. 6, Louise Gillholm, a marketing manager representing Candela at the show, was politely telling curious Americans that all the weekend slots were full, and crowds started to gather each time the boat pulled in and out of the demo dock.

“I’ve never seen you on this side of the Atlantic,” exclaimed an excited Stefan Nagey, when he recognized the Candela banner waving at slip K2. An Annapolis native who read about Candela (pronounced kan-De-la) several years ago, Nagey said has been following the company on social media ever since. He owns a sailboat, but if he ever got a powerboat, he would want it to be electric.

“I drive a Tesla and I bike everywhere I can,” Nagey said. “I want to reduce fossil fuel consumption, make less of an environmental impact and all that other kinds of stuff.”

Also: Powerboats smell.

“As a kid, I used to call my grandmother’s powerboat ‘the stinkboat,’ ” he said.

Candela was founded on the principle of avoiding gas guzzling. Founder and CEO Gustav Hasselskog says he was inspired to develop a hydrofoiling boat after motoring his children from a summer island home to an ice cream parlor. Loosely converting Swedish kroner to U.S. dollars, Hasselskog realized that he spent $5 on ice cream and $50 on gas. He vowed to make boating cheaper. After about four years of investment and development, including collaborations with ex-Saab jet propulsion engineers, the first Candela electric foiling boats hit the market in 2021.

Hasselskog wasn’t in Annapolis for the boat show. Sofia Lerm, a San Francisco-based business developer for Candela, recounted the origin story while piloting the company’s second generation boat, the C-8, out of Spa Creek and into the Severn River on Friday. Only two C-8s have been delivered in North America thus far, but another 40 are on order. Other electric boat makers have a larger market share, including Swedish competitors Nimbus and XShore, but the hydrofoiling boat can travel faster and farther on a much lighter battery.

“It’s a simple math problem,” she said. “The battery cell weighs on average 15 times as much as a fuel cell. The more weight you put onto a boat, the more water you have to push away.”

But what if the boat came out of the water, minimizing that resistance? When the Candela C-8 hits about 16 knots, retractable hydrofoils lower into the water and the entire hull lifts about a foot above the surface. Lerm and her colleagues call it “flying.”

“There is a lot of fighter jet technology incorporated into this boat,” she said.

Like passengers on a runway, test riders have to strap in before Lerm drops the throttle. “We’re so stable that people forget we are in a fast-moving boat,” she said. “We have seat belts, and we take a lot of pride in them.”

Up on foils in the Severn, the Candela C-8 zoomed by the schooner Liberté, a charter modeled on a 1700 New England schooner. Under conventional etiquette, it might be rude for a 28-foot powerboat to pass a leisure sailing cruise. Not if electric hydrofoiling on the Severn. Despite cruising at 23 knots, the Candela C-8 creates almost zero wake. It’s also remarkably quiet.

“We’re going 23 knots, and we can still have a normal conversation,” Lerm said. “I’m not yelling.”

Still, she obeyed the speed restrictions and retracted the foils heading back to City Dock. In Stockholm, Candela recently received an exception to travel faster than conventional motorboats. Sweden’s capital is built on an archipelago, with some islands connected by subways and others by various water taxis, including historic steamboats and even a short-distance autonomous electric ferry. A new Candela passenger boat is scheduled to begin test runs later this month and should cut commuting times in half for residents of one island normally 50 minutes from the city enter. The P-12 Shuttle, Candela hopes, is the future of maritime public transit.

Annapolis is among the American cities shopping around for electric ferries. Last year the city received a $2.9 million federal Department of Transportation grant for two electric vessels that Mayor Gavin Buckley hopes can carry passengers between City Dock and Eastport. Buckley has already admitted he’s smitten with XShore, which also has been represented at the Annapolis Powerboat Show since 2021. A pioneering Canadian firm, Vision Marine Technologies, sent a pontoon-like cruiser to the demo dock this year. Garlands of red-and-white flowers hung from its canopy, and an enticing picnic spread was arranged at a center table.

Ted Grant, a physicist who retired to Annapolis and works part time for the boat show, snagged a spot in Gillholm’s notebook to take a test ride on Sunday. He peppered the Swedish women with advance questions.

“We have a lot of wood and logs in the water around here,” Grant asked. “What happens if you hit one?”

The Candela hydrofoils are designed to be “sacrificial,” Lerm explained. “It’s very undramatic.”

If they hit something hard enough while extended, the carbon composite foils will break off and need to be replaced. But she was also quick to point out that replacing a foil is cheaper than replacing a conventional engine, and the foil will take the beating, not the boat’s hull.

“A lot of insurance companies are realizing that it is actually safer and less expensive to hit a rock with a Candela than a conventional boat,” Lerm said

Grant also wanted to know how far the boat can travel on one charge: About 50 miles if traveling at 22 knots, Gillholm said. For some long-distance boaters, that’s an obvious drawback. So is the upfront cost of $395,000 for a base model, although once you invest in a Candela, boating is “virtually free” with limited annual maintenance.

A software engineer who recently moved to Gibson Island was curious whether a Candela could stay afloat at his dock during low tide. That could be a deal breaker: The C-8, which includes a small interior sleeping cabin, needs a little more than 4 feet of water to safely stay bobbing in the water.

The engineer got lucky — one of the 3 p.m. demo riders failed to show, and he hopped aboard after four very enthusiastic members of the Maryland Natural Resources Police disembarked, including Reserve Officer Jack Boyser.

“We’re police approved,” Lerm happily exclaimed.

While Boyser pointed out he could only speak for himself, not the state agency he works for, he was thrilled to see Candela’s green technology on display at the boat show. “I saw one boat today with a 1,200-gallon gas tank,” he said, shaking his head.

While the DNR probably needs boats that can travel farther than 50 miles at high speeds on one charge, his hope is that Maryland agencies will invest in battery-powered boats whenever possible.

“We need to start getting more electric boats in the water,” Boyser said. “We have got to start changing the culture.”