Mike, your position assumes that Murray has an ulterior motive with the rule changes. While I too once held that position based on the stream of information coming out of the two teams that lodged protests, I think it's important to note that he was put in place by all of the competitors and it's unlikely that he's being influenced by one team.

I'm starting to come of mind that Murray just honestly believes that these changes are safer and, frankly, it's hard to argue with that actually. The offset rudder lifting foil (asymmetrical is a misleading term) does lead to enormous torque loads on the vertical rudder foil and hinge system and could lead to breakage....for all we know one or both of the capsizes to date had this issue lead to the capsize. I can see how allowing the rudder foil to be centered on the rudder and extend beyond the beam of the boat can be safer.

With regards to the issue of adjusting the rudder foil, there was also a lot of bad information circulating about this early. Previous to these changes, the rudder/foil rake had to be set prior to racing for that day. We all know that every one of these boats can adjust the rake of the rudder and it's attached foil - they would be insane to try and foil without this capability or, at the very least, it would be absolutely required for testing to determine the optimum setting. We also know that the wind can change dramatically in San Fran throughout the day and one rake setting may be terribly inadequate for the day. Teams would have the choice of setting it aggressively and being slow in the light air or setting it more flat and being in danger of a pitchpole should the wind build later. The rule allows them to change it prior to starting each race and better tune it for the conditions. I also believe this is a safer scenario than allowing one setting for the day.

I've come to mind that these changes are pretty reasonable. Oracle seems to have had a jump on this because they had a lot of different rudder and foil combinations. If I were to guess, I bet their pitchpole lead to (or was caused by) rudder failure that lead them to try several different things. New Zealand is probably on par with them in this regard. I don't think any team could change and try different rudder foils without being observed since it flies above the water regularly.

The two teams with less budget / development are likely behind when it comes to foil options - Artemis admitted it with Cayard's tour/interview yesterday and ~maybe~ Luna Rossa admitted as much in the vacuum of their competing yesterday. They're slated to race Artemis through this week and since Artemis isn't racing, we probably won't see LR until Saturday when they're scheduled to race NZ again. By not showing up and racing yesterday, they had an additional week to work out the new rudders.

Also remember that the original rule was intended to make foiling unpractical. Some of these limitations have become liabilities now that everyone is foiling - it makes sense to tweak the rule to make things safer and I think the only real argument you could make against it is that the timing leaves something to be desired.

This is such a game of controlling the media that I think the race management fell behind the two protesting challengers in getting their story out. Those two protesting competitors set the tone and we have already seen several glaring inaccuracies out of those reports that you really have to question the whole thing.