How can sailboats go faster than the wind speed?

Question

Is it the apparent wind created by forward momentum? Is it possible to go downwind faster than the wind speed?

In: 315

Answer 1

I used to play with bars of soap in the bath tub when I was a kid. If you put your hand down on a wet bar of soap at a slight angle and pressed, it would pop out like a rocket and slide around the tub. That true even though nothing about you was ever moving very fast. You could imagine a point where pushing down at an angle makes the bar pop out faster than you could push the bar from behind.

Similar dealio with the wind.