David Hubbard is working for Ellison, Duncan MacLane for Bertarelli. Guess what...
Ohh YEaahhhh!!!
Finally, America's Cup using cutting edge technology. We need to see lifting foils...
My bet; that will never happen. We will see foils that will provide some lift but nothing that will clear the boat from the water. While lifting foils work on super lightweight and low aero-drag moths, on anything of any size lifting foils have not yet proven to get to weather efficiently enough to be an advantage around a technical course. They tend to be more of a "drag" upwind as the boat can't get airborne at high angles of attack and turn out to be a source for a lot of slowness. Yes, Hydroptere absolutely rocks, but she doesn't go to weather well at all...all video you see of her is a very deep beam reach since she generates such incredible apparent wind.
I think that some of the work done with the SYZ foiler could come into play here. I do not think it will, but they sail in the same series of races the EB does and have connections to Alinghi. Time will tell though. I think it would be a huge project to take what SYZ has learned over all their trial phases and apply it to a catamaran this size.
