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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Imagine a watermelon seed between your fingers. You pinch it, and it shoots forward.
A sailboat is pinched by the wind and the water and shoots forward. The wind pinches one side on the sails. The water pinches the other side on the bottom of the boat.
If you remember what water melon seeds are….
If you push on one side of a seed on a table, it slides the way you push it. If you put your thumb on the opposite side you are pushing on, it doesn’t go the way you push it, it shoots out at an angle to the way you pushed it.
Sail boats do this.
They have keels and other similar devices that stick down into the water below the boat. The keels help the boat resist moving anything but fwd or backwards. So when the wind blows into the sails, the keel keeps the boat from just going the way the wind blows, and allows it to slip out forward, just like the watermelon seed.
With the daggerboard or keel to limit the boat from side sliding, a modern sail boat can beat about 45° off the direction of the wind because modern sails act like a wing and create “lift” that pulls them up like a planes wing, but since the sail is vertical it acts as a forward driving force.
I didn’t really understand this myself until I learned how to windsurf. Theory is great, but sailing is one of those things you need to experience with your hands to fully understand.
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