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Each sailing craft is a system that mobilizes wind force through its sails—supported by spars and rigging—which provide motive power and reactive force from the underbody of a sailboat—including the keel, centerboard, rudder or other underwater foils—or the running gear of an ice boat or land craft, which allows it to be kept on a course.
Tacking or coming about is a sailing maneuver by which a sailing craft (sailing vessel, ice boat, or land yacht), whose next destination is into the wind, turns its bow toward and through the wind so that the direction from which the wind blows changes from one side of the boat to the other, allowing progress in the desired direction. [1]
A sailboat cannot make headway by sailing directly into the wind (see "Discussion," below); the point of sail into the wind is called "close hauled". Sailing into the wind is possible when the sail is angled in a slightly more forward direction than the sail force. In this aspect, the boat will move forward because the keel (centerline), of the ...
A sailboat on three points of sail The waves give an indication of the true wind direction. The flag gives an indication of apparent wind direction. True wind can also be indicated by a fixed wind indicator (flag, windsock, etc., not attached to the boat or any moving object).
This motion is generated directly either by the water and wind motion, particularly lateral wave motion, exerting forces against the hull or by the ship's own propulsion; or indirectly by the inertia of the ship while turning. This movement can be compared to the vessel's lateral drift from its course.
The physics of sailing arises from a balance of forces between the wind powering the sailing craft as it passes over its sails and the resistance by the sailing craft against being blown off course, which is provided in the water by the keel, rudder, underwater foils and other elements of the underbody of a sailboat, on ice by the runners of an ...
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Apparent wind is the wind velocity (direction and speed), V A, measured aboard a moving sailing craft; it is the net effect of the boat wind, V B —the air flow over the craft induced by its speed over the earth (equal to in magnitude, but opposite in direction to the craft's speed)—and the true wind, V T.