KEY POINTS:
VALENCIA - The next America's Cup will be sailed in bigger and faster boats, with a new challenger series format and at a time and venue still to be decided.
America's Cup Management, the organisation set up by defenders Alinghi to run the event after they first won
the Auld Mug four years ago, today released the protocol governing the next regatta.
The protocol was signed by the yacht clubs represented by Alinghi and Spain's Desafio Espanol, after the Swiss syndicate completed a 5-2 victory over Team New Zealand off Valencia this week.
The new class of yacht will have a maximum overall length of 27.5 metres compared with the present 24m.
It will have a draft while racing of 6.5m, as against the present 4.1m, but will have a compulsory sliding keel system capable of reducing the draft to 4.1m for entering port and docking.
Alinghi skipper Brad Butterworth said there was general consensus that a change was needed after five cup regattas with the same type of boat going back to 1992.
"These boats have been fantastic and I like sailing them, but I think they've got to the end of their life and people are looking for something a bit different, a bit more exciting," he said.
"The new boats will be bigger, faster, harder to sail. They will be 90 feet. They won't have hydraulically run winches, so the guys will have to be athletic. They will be tough to sail."
Butterworth said Alinghi design team members Rolf Vrolik and Grant Simmer would be the key personnel in formulating the new class rule, which would be issued before the end of the year.
It was impractical to get a lot of other people involved, because then "you never come up with anything".
He said the rule would be reasonably tight, but with enough flexibility for designers to be innovative.
"It is a design contest and a technology race," he said.
"I think that's way the cup had always been and let's keep it that way."
Butterworth expected the new yacht to cope with a wide wind range -- eight to 30 knots, compared with the seven to 23-knot limit set down for Valencia -- and to have a crew of about 20 to 21, up from the present 17.
ACM chief executive Michel Bonnefous said the venue for the next America's Cup would be announced before the end of the year.
Negotiations were continuing with Valencia's local authorities and, if agreement was reached, the match would be held in 2009.
If the event was moved elsewhere in Europe, the date would be put back to 2010 or 2011.
"We have a few cities who have transmitted their interest to us," Bonnefus said.
Under the protocol, the new boats would not be in competitive action until at least 18 months after the class rule is published.
That could lead to the scenario of the present America's Cup boats being used for all the lead-up racing, and the new yachts not making their debut until the cup match itself.
The protocol envisages three stages of competition before the final showdown between Alinghi and the eventual challenging syndicate.
There will be qualifying regattas to weed out the weaker teams if there are more entries than a venue can cater for.
That will be be followed by "trials" and then a "challenger selection", the latter the equivalent of the present Louis Vuitton Cup challenger series.
Louis Vuitton has sponsored the challenger series since 1983, but the luxury goods company's continued involvement is in doubt because of philosophical differences with ACM over the direction of the America's Cup.
The protocol also allows Alinghi to be part of both the trials and the challenger selection.
It provides for the possibility that teams might be restricted to one new 90-footer.
But it also allows the defending yacht club, the Societe Nautique de Geneve, to runs defender trials, which presumably could mean two or more Swiss 90-footers going head to head.
- NZPA