Kiwi hydrogen-powered America’s Cup chase boat, “Case Zero.”

Who knew that power boats would be the news at this year’s America’s Cup? The world’s oldest sporting competition — for sailboats, mind you — starts up again later this month in Barcelona, Spain. No San Diego Yacht Club presence this time, but at least the New York Yacht Club will be there, representing the U.S. with its foiling version of American Magic. The problem? Call it logistics. The latest yachts are so fast, their own chase boats sometimes can’t chase them down. Foilers can skim over the water at 50-plus miles per hour, and even if the chase boats can catch them, they have to use throat-choking amounts of throttle — read: CO2 exhaust pollution — to do it. Hardly a good ad for this “pollution-free” sport.

Then along comes the Chase Zero, the Kiwi chase boat that combines newly unleashed powers (unleashed by splitting hydrogen atoms) with foils — kinda underwater water skis — to lift most of the boat on top of the sea, just like the yachts themselves.

I’ve been following the reigning champs, New Zealand’s Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, as they readied this year’s defender, the 75-foot Tathoro, which is short for “taihoro nukurangi,” “to move swiftly, as the sea between sky and earth.” The Kiwis’ fame as innovators got a rocket boost back in 2013 when they wheeled from their shed a boat that actually lifted out of the water and skipped along on those thin foils, and so sailed way faster than any previous competitor ever had.

Four times, so far, the Kiwis have owned the 1848-crafted silver ewer: in San Diego in 1995, 2000 (off Auckland, New Zealand), 2017 (Bermuda), and 2021 (Auckland again). Okay, that record pales beside the New York Yacht Club’s 24 victories in a row between 1857 and 1983, but it is New Zealanders who are the current owners. And, this year, they have developed the world’s first pollution-free hydrogen-powered chase boat. And yet, Chase Zero still uses engines. That’s right: two Toyota hydrogen-burning fuel cells. Chase Zero can keep up with their yacht and then some, yet, incredibly, it costs Mother Earth absolutely nothing. In these CO2-conscious times, if nothing else, the Kiwis are surely ahead on the PR front.

Yes, the engines send out exhaust: H2O. Water! They aren’t any kind of total pollution solution — hydrogen is too bulky, and too expensive; and one reason industry loves it is because they can throw their fossil fuels through the same pipelines. But it is revolutionary. How revolutionary? A group called Energy Observer sent a similar power boat around the world without using an ounce of fossil fuel.

So what now? We should hold our breaths for hydrogen-powered cargo ships, and maybe also foiling, sailing superliners sliding into ’Diego Bay on that Norwesterly breeze from Hawaii and China. Talk about back to the future.