Looks like multihulls are out for the next cup, plan is apparantly to go with foiling monohulls:
Team New Zealand confirm 36th America's Cup to be raced in foiling monohulls

Yuck...

Mike

I can identify with one aspect of what they're trying to do. The grinders and the x-box controllers did bother me a little bit. I do like seeing the guys wind and grind winches and make lots of timed physical maneuvers to sail the boats. Bicycles on the deck always seemed to strike a little touch of absurdity with me - it's a marriage of two different unrelated sports and those guys legitimately have nothing to do with executing the boat. I dunno. Not a fan of the monohull, obviously...it seems like a pretty big step backwards. The only reason the Volvo uses them is that it will easily self right (which is important going where these guys go) but strapping a hunk of lead to something you are trying to get up out of the water onto a foil seems sillier than bicycles on a sailboat.

The irony is that a foiling monohull would require even more grinders unless they figure out a way to do it without a (lead) swinging keel..
Alternative would be some sort of skiff with huge racks and lots of crew/railmeat.
Can you really call the VOR setup a foiler though? Isn't that more of a skimmer?

Could you imagine if this was a 50ft mono?
That would be something I'd watch
https://www.instagram.com/p/BY8KggwDyp7/

good point about more grinders... How will they charge the canting keel hydraulics? Foil controls ? Will they use "cyclors" as well?

Did they NOT like the flips and collisions on the multihulls? I mean aside from Bart's tragic death, those incidents probably drew a lot of eyeballs.

Believe half of what you hear, right?

The Italians are being "credited" with the decision, but as we all know, CoRs are selected by the defender well in advance, and undoubtedly, after reaching at least some level of agreement.

Of course, all you need to do is re-watch the presser with Dalton after they won, his words and especially expression screamed "Not over my dead body, I hate cats."

They obviously aren't convinced that cats add enough excitement to add enough fans to offset what they believe is lost by moving away from "tradition." Don't forget, they also paid dearly for everyone's excitement when they capsized.

I think that they're kidding themselves (or lying to the world) about ever lowering the cost or headcount (although, Dalton did call that out as a false goal in said presser). I also wonder how their foiling sloop, which is supposed to be as fast as a foiling cat (unlikely in light air), will solve the problem of boat separation that the match racing purists abhor...

Mike

From Latitude 38:

September 13, 2017 – Auckland, New Zealand

Monohulls. Foiling monohulls.

At least that's the news we heard from Radio New Zealand, who on Tuesday wrote, "The next edition of America's Cup racing will switch from catamarans to high-performance monohull yachts, defending champions Team New Zealand have confirmed.

"And while the boats will be monohulls, they will also be foiling boats — lifting off the water like the catamarans did," RNZ reported.

Both RNZ and Scuttlebutt reported that Patrizio Bertelli — the head of Luna Rossa, the Challenger of Record — said in an interview with an Italian newspaper that his support for Emirates Team New Zealand's 2017 bid in Bermuda hinged on the Kiwis going back to monohulls, should they win. "It was the condition for us to help them with men and means in the last edition," Bertelli was quoted as saying.

For all the debate and speculation at the immediate conclusion of the Match about what type of boats would race in the next Cup, it appears that monohulls were in the cards long before they were dealt.

The exact date of the next Match seems to be up in the air, but the Kiwis said they're "considering the possibility" of holding the 36th Cup in Auckland in summer 2021. What has been clear since ETNZ's 'mini announcement' in July is that there will be a "'constructed in country' requirement for competing yachts and a nationality requirement for competing crew members."

RNZ said that more details would be coming later this month, but reported that ETNZ said they have been discussing design protocols with would-be challengers. "There is an overall desire to have a spectacular monohull yacht that will be exciting to match race, but also one that the public and sailors can relate to as a sailboat that really challenges a full crew of professional yachtsmen around the race track," Team New Zealand said in a statement, referring to the machine-like feel of the catamarans, which required pumping hydraulic oil as much as they did sailing.

After winning in Bermuda this summer, ETNZ CEO Grant Dalton said, "The sport needs stability," and RNZ reported that Dalton said he wants entry to the Cup to "be more affordable, and for rules to be less slanted in favor of the defenders."

While all this early conjecture is interesting, we're still waiting for a few rounds of lawsuits — and we'll believe our eyes when we actually see the new America's Cup Class ripping across the Hauraki Gulf in Auckland. We can only hope that the new Cup format will be good for the sport of sailing.

I disagree with some of those spectator opinions that match racing wasn't evident in the last AC semi- and finals. Seems quite a few races were nail-biters for me to watch.

So what if the separation was several hundred meters vs. a boat-length. At those speeds, the lead changed up to 5-6 times during the race. How is that different than a match race at 5 knots?

Doing 30 knots is much more thrilling, even if the video (and team professionalism) made it look like a gentle light-air sail....

Such a bunch of self-contradictory nonsense. "The event needs stability." OK, let's turn the existing plan on its head and change boats yet again... Oh, and "affordability" is back in the conversation. Nice...

Mike

Also amusing to hear Dalton say how the rules heavily favoured the defender while Oracle got pretty much destroyed on every race.

Any guesses on who will represent the US?

AC36: Protocol (Notice of Race) has just been announced in Auckland at RNZYS; it's Back to the Future
https://www.sailingillustrated.com/...Auckland-at-RNZYS-its-Back-to-the-Future

And only 2 million entrance fee (unless late then 3mil)

1 million USD at the moment of the acceptance of the challenge + 1 million USD to be
paid no later than 30th of November 2018. The latter can be paid in four instalments;
• Late entries: 1 million USD penalty;
• Performance bond: 1 million USD
• America’s Cup World Series: 300,000 USD per each event;
• AC Christmas Regatta: no entry fee will be due.

I wonder if the spectacle of flying boats in the 35th AC will draw some interested viewers over to the C-class cat scene?

Apparently, the Prada vs. Louis Vuitton thing is more real than I'd previously imagined. I thought people were reading into it too much when ETNZ threw the LV bags into the crowd. I honestly thought they were literally giving back to their fans, now it appears that they were just being classless.

Burling really screwed the pooch with that pitchpole. No more reaching starts (which make less sense on monohulls anyways)...

Mike

I'm sure I'll be watching this iteration of the AC, and there will be plenty of topics to argue about

I wonder if they will keep the race elapsed time under 1 hour?