I am not satisfied by my suggestions insofar as I cannot produce one term that covers foiling craft and ACVs. The term "navire à sustentation" appears more regularly, but seems to be a particularly French term. It appears in a text in the Journal Officiel too, from 1987 to current day. It includes not only hydrofoils and ACv craft but also "hydrojets", "navire à sustentation hydropropulsés". However, older texts in English, seem to have used "surface-skimming" to describe what both hydrofoils and ACVs do.

if your text also extends to hydrojet craft, then you may hav to go for something descriptive. A hydrojet craft does not really skim the surface as it does remain in contact with the surface of the water.


Hydrofoilers, Air cushion vessels (AVC), foilers, foiling craft all fall into this category. I cannot pin down a category for all though.

This may help, although I'm not sure if it is used currently. Ive not heard it used much ever, certainly not recently and I work with naval architects and designers a fair bit and have been doing so for the last 20 years. Sources I come across tend to specify (hydrofoil, foiler, ACV), etc.

http://www.ebay.fr/itm/Janes-Surface-Skimmer-Systems-1968-19...


https://books.google.fr/books?id=qiTICgAAQBAJ&pg=PA451&lpg=P...


The term "planing" is used as a standard term, as opposed to "displacement". It is not right for "sustentation" though. Planing craft lift out of the water using hydrodynamic lift but they do not fly above the surface of the water, which is the case of hydrofoils and ACVs.


See http://www.foils.org/glossary.htm
Okay, so a boat will go from hullborne to foilborne or airborne, but airborne, flying boat are hydravions.

Then there are the flying multihulls, of the type raced in the Little Cup, the C-Class boats. They are essentially foiling cats, and cannot cover ACVs.








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Note added at 1 hr (2017-03-16 11:44:25 GMT)
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I should ahve put 2/5 for confidence leve. I'm absolutely not guessing, but I am not convinced there is an equivalent term that covers the types to be included and so reckon that a descriptive solution is the way to go.

I'd be interested to see what others come up with too.

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Note added at 2 days25 mins (2017-03-18 10:18:56 GMT)
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Google references to "vertical+lift+boat" tend to be about lifting boats out of the water with cranes, hoists etc. In fact, more often than not, the sources are actually for "verrtical boat lift", obviously off-tergat!

For obvious reasons, the term "vertical lift" comes up in lots of naval architectural sources. In fact, there is not a lot of context in the information you have provided so it is a little difficult to know what your source is actually intending to include. If you go by what is in official documents, then as Charles points out in the discussion box, hydrofoils are likely to be excluded. Indeed, it would seem to mean ACV. However, you indicate that hydrofoils are included in this term. If there are clear indications to hydrofoils in this caategory, then you may need to go with something more descriptive to cover both. Hydrofoils enable a hull to develop vertical lift, but if your original is meant to include ACVs, then the technique is so different it seems strange to have both falling into one category.

I'm not sure that "vertical lift boat" provides any clear meaning. It will all depend on context, which we are in fact lacking, and your target reader, which we have no info about either.