I tried to google it and it left me very confused.
In: 306
When I first learned to sail I remember this being confusing. The short answer is that of course a sailboat cannot literally sail directly into the wind. What they can do is sail at a diagonal to the wind. A sail is a wing. If the wind is blowing across the wing, it generates “lift” except the lift in this case is sideways so to speak, meaning the lift is “pulling” the sailboat forward. That still doesn’t mean you can sail directly into the wind, but you can zig zag back and forth across the wind slowing making progress on average in the direction of the wind. It’s tedious and slow but it works.
Note also that it’s not something that’s easy to describe in words but it’s really easy imo to see it visually on a diagram. I would look for these cute pictures of sail boats drawn from an overhead view where you can see the direction of the boat, the direction of the wind and the direction of the sail.
Latest Answers