Air borne America's Cup?

Oracle Team USA has fitted foils to one of its AC45s

Is this really the future of the America's Cup or merely a red herring from the defenders Oracle Team USA? Out on San Francisco Bay the normally highly secretive team have been testing lifting foils on one of their AC45s: an L-foil on their rudder and T-foils on their daggerboards.

Fitting lifting foils on catamarans is by no means a new thing. The Syz & Co catamaran on Lake Geneva featured them while Fred Eaton's Canadian Little America's Cup campaign also tried two boating with one of their C-Class catamaran fitted with lifting foils against another without. In both these cases - although the foil configuration on the Swiss cat wasn't the same - the result proved the flying catamaran wasn't as fast around a race course as the conventional non-lifting version.

But if there is a technical team that could make this work then it will be Oracle Team USA's...and one wonders how many teams will feature this on their AC72s..?