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?
In: 34
They can’t go directly into the wind, but angles of around 40-50 degrees to the wind are achievable for most sailing boats. Sails aren’t just flat sheets, they have a bit of a curved shape to them, thus they deflect the wind a bit. There’s a resultant force on the sail (i.e., sail pushes wind one way, wind pushes back on the sail the opposite way), some component of which is in the forward direction. There’s also a big sideways component, but sailing boats have deep keels / centreboards that create a big amount of sideways drag while minimising forward drag in order to ensure the sideways force doesn’t result in too much sideways movement but the forward component does push make the boat move forward.
In a round pond you can get to any point, but not in a straight line – to go directly upwind you have to set off at 45 degrees to it going left, then change direction and go 45 degrees to it heading right, zig-zagging your way there. If you watch for a few minutes from 1:49 there are several aerial shots showing this (also the curvature of the sail) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNk7k0f3tPg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNk7k0f3tPg)
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