Air-board inventor makes it more than halfway across Channel

SANGATTE, France (AP) — Looking like a superhero, the French inventor of an airborne hoverboard glided partway over the English Channel on his personal flying machine then crashed in the sea today.

Unharmed and undeterred, 40-year-old Franky Zapata said he plans to try again. Perhaps within days.

The inventor collided with a refueling boat just a few hours into his flight, destroying his transportation, a homemade version of the Flyboard his company sells commercially.

After being rescued from the Channel's choppy waters, Zapata smiled and said, "We won't give up until we succeed."

Zapata took off to cross the Channel from the French coastal town of Sangatte. From afar, it looked like he was skateboarding on the sky.

He hoped to travel 22.4 miles to the Dover area in southeast England. Propelled by a power pack full of kerosene, he planned to refuel from a boat partway across.

"I felt really great. It's just fantastic," Zapata told reporters later of the experience. "I was flying. It was like a dream."

Reaching speeds up to 110 mph, he traveled some 12 miles, more than halfway to the English shore. That's farther than he had ever traveled on his air-board.

But as he descended for a refueling stop on a boat, the platform he was meant to land on was moving too much from the waves. He wasn't able to grab onto it, and he plunged into the sea.

Zapata winced as he described the "disaster." He said his helmet filled with water and he struggled for breath. But he came away from the rescue by French divers with just a scratch on his arm.