I found this interview in a recent issue of Sea Horse Magazine. They are speaking with Gino Morelli of Melvin/Morrelli Design SeaHorseMag: You’re given a clean sheet of paper and asked to design your ultimate multihull...
GinoMorrelli: For me right now it would be a powercat! My personal solution is into powerboats due in part to the fact that I have a wife, kids, a business and a schedule. Sailing is now a luxury I can’t really afford. But if I could guarantee I could go 18-20 kts anywhere any time with a sailboat, then I could almost live a life afloat.
The one thing I can see coming is what could be called the SUV of sailing. There are a lot of cool things going on with drives right now. The aim is to retract, remove, or eliminate the drive when we don’t need it. The problem we currently face is that if we put the right engine in to go 20kts, then the hull shape is wrong. That’s led to tough compromises, but if we can make the power plants lighter, and get rid of the drag of propulsion when we’re under sail, then I can see us ending up with a 20kt boat… it will do 20kt under sail, 20kt under power, and it’s going to be fairly user-friendly all the time.
I also like the thought of kite sails I think ultimately that’s a way to be able to get a high-power low-risk sail plan. The trick is going to be making it auto-pilotable. There’s a bunch of guys working on it, in fact we’re scheduled to test one on one of out Leopard 47 production boats that we’ll soon be delivering from the builders in Cape Town to Tortola. The Moorings is auditioning a couple of guys to build a kite to help reduce fuel costs for their deliveries so we have been fooling around with some of those guys, trying to figure out how we can make this happen and stick it on autopilot. The pilot would control the angle of attack and let us fly the kite day and night
Plus you need to have a simple launch and recovery system... There are some bizarre kite guys out there fooling around with some different designs that have promise. It's just a matter of getting some funding for them so they can build prototypes. The shipping industry is actually pushing the limit of kites a little faster than the recreational side, so we may see some of this development come out of the shipping industry because they have a lot of reasons to get some power out of the wind.
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SeaHorseMag: And what about your pure performance multihulls.
GinoMorrelli: From here on it’s going to be a horses-for-courses thing. If you’re looking at the next generation of multi to break the round-the-world record as opposed to a single-handed transatlantic, then obviously Hydroptère is where you should look. It’s opening up a giant crack and showing us that it you can spend enough money and are diligent enough then you’re on your way. They are going to get that thing to stay together one of these days, and it’s going to break the 24-hour record and the Atlantic record. And there are some dudes telling you that thing could go round the world one of these days — if you have enough time and money to develop it, foils are definitely the way to go.. it’s an instant turbo. We’re still not sure what exactly that boat’s gonna be — a foil-borne biplane cat or tri, or a foil-borne, wingmasted, tilted bi-plane ‘thing’.
I also have these crazy visions of a big foil-borne, kite-driven, ultra-light three person boat. That’s where the programming and the software for the autopilot for the kite come into play. It’s where you set a ginormous kite then tell it never to develop more than 20,000lb lift. You’d probably control it by just making it drive at a different angle of attack. It’s gonna happen
...but interesting how she makes use of that extra wide deck area available 
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