1/
close to shore racing is far better than 20 miles out to sea
& yes I was at Fremantle in Western Australia when we defended the cup way back when..... watch them sail out, go the pub and watch the racing on TV, then go back down to the dock and watch them sail back in..... if you were still capable of walking
Being able to watch most of the racing from the shoreline is a MAJOR plus.

2/
Catamarans are far more exciting than monohulls to the non sailing people..... its a speed thing
As to whether they stay with cats or go for tri's is anyone's guess.

3/
the AC45 series is a MUST HAVE.
every premier class of sport has a support class that's "up there" with the big guns, Forumla 1, MotoGP, & even Nascar use other classes to support the main events, it also provides a stepping stone for those not quite prepared to go all the way
whilst the 72' aren't practicle to be packed up and moved from country to country for a true 'global' race series, the 45's are. We need to exploit this support class to the max in order to promote the big toys..... a similar global series like the F1's and MotoGP's have would be a huge boost to all forms of sailing.

4/
Use of WWW. is a huge plus
whilst I've only seen a few news highlights on the idiot-box, there has been very little if any actual coverage on TV here in Australia via free to air TV, thankfully YouTube and the live ability kept many of us well informed and up to date..... I must also say one member of this forum should be thanked for his endless supply of info throughout the entire series, a job well done !

5/
The classes need to be separated.
I still fail to understand how the US boat lost points from a so-called separate series infraction of the rules....
That's like a driver stuffing up in the nationwide series and being penalised in the sprint-cup series ..... doesn't happen !!!!
Separate them..... what happened during the 45's series should have stayed with the 45's series

6/
Keep up with technology but control the level of its use.
If I had told you 5 years ago we'd be racing for the America's Cup on carbon fibre catamarans with shrink-wraped wings for sails and we'd be above the water and not actually in it you'd have told me to step away from the crack-pipe... so its not a case of where will we be in a year or 2 but where do we want to be in 5 ~ 10years time ???

7/
the human element.....
As far as I'm concerned, the day we hand over a racing boat/car/plane or whatever to a tech-wiz with an xBox controller we have lost the true meaning of sport.
Human error and indeed human input is what any sport requires, be it on a mass produced hobie or a multi million dollar boat....
Take away the human and it may aswell be a app for the iPad, then and we can all play instead of dreaming of what could be, yeah that will give me inspiration to try harder..... NOT !!!





Having said that......
For me the 45's were an awesome series, close racing and a largish fleet of boats all out there to win, personally I'd like a similar format for the cup, ofcourse I can understand that these big boats need far more room and so 1-on-1 racing is a safe way to go..... but I wonder how much more exciting the main event could have been if ALL the 72's raced at the same time ......
How many of us would love to see Oracle, Artemis, Luna-Rossa, & Emirates all running down the same leg of the course at the same time ???

now that would be some serious racing to see



till next time we wait n see.... in the mean-time, haul to thar wind and hold ya water