Yachting: To hull and back

America's cup skipper Dean Barker has his doubts that the next Cup regatta will be fought out in multi-hulls - and has a sneaking suspicion that new, very slippery mono-hulls may be the eventual choice of new holders Oracle.

It's all conjecture at this stage but strong hints from BMW Oracle supremo Larry Ellison have suggested that the 34th America's Cup could again be fought in multi-hulls - but this time 60-footers (as opposed to the giant 100-footers that faced off in Valencia) and with a price tag of US$2m-$4m, instead of US$100 million.

That's been the strongest hint out of the BMW Oracle camp since they won the America's Cup and so far - thankfully - no sign of the feared court action from Alinghi after their 100-foot catamaran, conceived at vast expense, lost to Oracle's 100-foot trimaran, also conceived at vast expense but with rather more compelling technology.

US$100 million was the (conservative) figure estimated to have cost each side for these boats, including the cost of the legal action which plagued the Cup over the two and a half years since the previous regatta in Spain.

However, Ellison, in a recent ABC TV interview, gave perhaps the clearest indication yet of his thinking for the next regatta.

"There is an opportunity to make it [the Cup] more commercially attractive and exciting, especially for young people," he said in the interview. "There are plenty of people who love the tradition of mono-hulls but the younger generation love the extremely fast multi-hulls."

In that context, and asked about the possibility of holding the next Cup regatta in San Francisco Bay (the other contenders are long-time America's Cup base at Newport, Rhode Island and San Diego), Ellison said 60-foot multi-hulls were a possibility and spoke of the need to make the Cup more accessible.

San Francisco Bay meant thousands of people could watch the racing from land, as opposed to having to go offshore on a boat, as in Valencia. For those not at the venue, he envisaged cameras on the boats, microphones on the boats and helicopters to gain more vantage shots and to make the racing, the strategies and the seamanship more exciting.

This all has the facility to make Emirates Team New Zealand and its backers take a financial gulp. Multi-hulls would mean building a new boat and possibly hiring some new, specialist crew. It also means 2013 is the likely date for the next regatta as 2012 is Olympic year and a new boat and a new class rule means challenging syndicates need time to design, build, crew and trial the boats.

One central thread has run through all defences of the America's Cup - the holders like to give themselves the best chance possible of retention. Oracle put a lot of eggs, financial and otherwise, into the trimaran basket and it may be unlikely that they will remove that advantage by pitching the Cup back to traditional multi-hull, losing the expertise and technology they have built up.

That begs the question of what such a yacht might cost, especially if Oracle's acclaimed wing-sail - the costly, technologically advanced solid wing-sail system which played a large part in Alinghi's defeat - was to come into play.

However, Ellison appeared to rule out the wing-sail, saying: "I don't think we will be going back to what we had in Valencia - those big multi-hulls, 23 storeys tall and the enormously complex wing-sail driving our boat. That was very expensive and risky technology to build and to race.

"If we want teams from smaller countries to compete - and we do - we have to get control of the [America's Cup] budgets. We could look at 60-footers [multi-hulls] with soft sails where we can cut things back to US$2m-$4m... it could be a fairly simple design rule where some engineering improvements could be made but where the priority would be sailing skill.

"It's not about who has the best tennis racquet," Ellison said in the interview, "but who is the best tennis player."

Oracle say they won't be making any decisions before consulting the other teams and Barker has his doubts that multi-hulls will be Oracle's final choice.

"If they go for 60-foot mono-hulls, even with soft sails, I am not sure how many other teams will turn up; how many would back themselves to make the switch," he said.

"In the end they might revert to a new version of the more traditional America's Cup boats - as the multi-hulls can be very specialised but the racing can be pretty boring. You know, they are together at the start but then one boat buggers off in the distance and that's it...

"I think it's more interesting if there are tacking duels, grinders working hard and the boats are close together.

"The best Cup racing came in 1987 with the old 12-metre boats in high seas and strong winds and in 2007 when the boats were pretty even."

However, Barker also made the point that, even though he had done little multi-hull sailing, the switch could be made to multi-hulls - and he noted that many of the Oracle and Alinghi crews on the giant multi-hulls had been the same people as on the monohulls at the 2007 Cup regatta.

Meanwhile, even if Ellison's wing-sail plays no further part in the Cup, it could still be seen in San Francisco Bay if one nautical entrepreneur has his way - on the bay's plentiful ferries, to help them cut fuel costs.

Jay Gardner plans to build ferries with tall, solid sails, using the bay's strong winds to help haul commuters across the waves. Estimates suggest that use of a wing-sail similar to Oracle's technology could cut fuel costs (many ferries burn 70 gallons of diesel an hour) by up to 40 per cent.