There's two story lines here, one about the competition.
- Can anybody beat Ashby - probably not, Guck's not going, so he'll sweep. Spithill's more of a multi guy now, F18, Dogzilla and Acats all under this belt. It will be interesting to see how the two Aussie Olympic guys do, non-Acat guys, one Laser sailor and one 49er sailor. Two new non Acat sailors isnt really all that ground breaking, unless of course if they win. Its good to see that the Acat class is attracting new blood.

Its more disappointing rather than interesting that the US didnt show up. Winning without beating Guck, Melvin, Kinder, Hall, is a rather hollow victory. If you add up all the world and national titles that the US has in Acat sailing, you'd have a nice long list and lots of those guys are still racing. So in my opinion, this world championship will always have that as an asterick.

The other story is the curved boards.

- Do the curved boards really give that much of an advantage? - The answer is probably yes, in the right downwind wind range and how do you take adavantage of that?

The rest of your list really isnt that interesting (sorry)
And why is glued vs no glued interesting? Are you waiting for the glue to fail?

Shapes,
The more radical hull shapes, the LR2 and to a less extent the the Dk17 wont be there. I dont see anything that radical from the tool, balance, nikita or schuerer, they all look pretty similar, more of a refinement that than dramatic new ideas.

Boomless? Doubtful.

Rigs are getting stiffer with the squaretops, nothing new there. I doubt you'll see a whippy mast. The last big innovation came from Ben Hall with his wing mast and thats not going (disappointing). He also tried a super light weight mast in Florida last year, but he broke it. I doubt you'll see that again.

Any new techniques? The only new technique that would be interesting or innovative is if the curved boards allow you to plane downwind and go mild instead of wild.

Bill