I realize a sailboat can’t go directly at the wind (or maybe it can🤷🏽♂️) but for the life of me I can’t picture it going anywhere but where the wind is bowing.
Also, lets say you were in a round pond, could you sail to any point you wanted to in the pond with the wind blowing steady in one direction?
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I want to add that there’s a cool effect of *apparent wind* direction, that lets sailboat move even closer to straight into the wind. As the boat accelerates, it generates its own relative wind as it moves through the air. A very fast wind-powered vehicle, like an ice-boat or wheeled wind-cart can shift the apparent wind direction so that it can move within 10 or 15 degrees of straight into the wind. And as it accelerates, the wind speed over the sail increases, the vehicle accelerated even more, generating more apparent wind . . .
It’s exciting.
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