I'm surprised they are going to stick with the hard wing sail concept if they wanted to keep costs down.
If I recall, after the last go-round, they said the major expense was the 150 person shore team required to mount/dismount the wing?
Building boats only 10 feet shorter, but still requiring a huge shore team to launch/retrieve the wing every day is not going to be much cheaper than the 72's.
The wing is smaller, so, yeah, it saves a little. The whole money thing has always been a ruse, though. The "cost reduction measures" may make it easier to put a boat on the water in the event, but it's still going to take a fortune to put a winning campaign together. The winner is going to spend whatever it takes.
