Hi, Dave,

Missed you at Eustis.

Here's the text of my letter to Scuttlebutt re: A-Cup.

The hula has indeed pointed the way to the future America's Cups: Mulithulls! If two hulls are better than one then we should support this radical idea to insure interest in future campaigns. The next logical step after the hula is to write the new rule to include big cats and tris. Two hulls! Three hulls! And the rule-cheating five hulls! ("Well, it's not really five hulls", said the measurer.)

Everything about the current America's Cup doesn't resemble much from it's storied tradition, anyway. Why not complete the transition and give the audience and the crews some durable boats that revel in light or heavy air and while giving us a racier show to watch. With multihulls, the show in Europe will already have a huge interested following. The existing Cup has reached the epitome of boredom to the point that the most exciting thing in this series so far was to see flames painted on a bulb (Ooh!) or watching a crewman bail with a bucket (Ahh!). Only a storm that can break an oil tanker in half could begin to sink a current generation multihull giant while a "confused sea of three feet" can swamp the current crop of carbon monoshells. The hula has shown the way and we should all dance to the tune.

It's nice that a monohull designer admitted and the measurer agreed that two hulls are better than one.