The point is, if all you need the humans on board for is to grind up some hydrolics, well, what's the point? Hire a bunch of professional bicycle racers, put foot cranks on the pumps, sit them down in the wells and let them peddle up some PSI, then let the computers fine tune the foils, trim the wing and tweak the rudders too...
Is that "Sailing" or is that HAL running a sailboat?
How is that different from the last several iterations of the AC? Most of those dudes were grinders, too? Just mechanical grinding with one or two guys actually manipulating the sail trim. Don't they have two or three "trimmers" on the 34 AC boats which were actually adjusting sail/wing/foil trim?
And on the use of foot-grinders, didn't the French try that once? I think it was problematic to switch from forward to backward pedaling (back in the mechanical grinding days) when switching gears or sitting reverse in the 2-person coffee grinder station.
Now that things could be pneumatic or hydraulic, you may not need the "geared" stations (which would require reverse pedaling) and perhaps this concept should be looked at again.
Of course, after pedaling like Lance for a few minutes to then hop up and sprint across the trampoline might make for some comedic pictures. But it WOULD free up the operator's hands for other controls (sheet handling, etc)
I'm going to miss "sex-breath"...
