Some of the most common questions asked on a sailing charter are based on an iteration of “how does this all work?”. This is a great question and exactly why we’re going to discuss how sailing works! Before our founder become such a knowledgeable captain, he himself pondered this same issue. While the best way to understand this phenomenon is by doing, we’ll give you a quick summary right here.
The Olden Days
It’s fairly easy to conjure up an image of an old pirate shipped, with big square sails, captained by Johnny Depp… I mean Jack Sparrow. These are known as “square-rigged” ships. The sails behave just as you would expect, catching wind and pushing the boat forward. Simple enough and pretty straightforward. The more difficult questions arise when we think about how a sailboat sails INTO the wind!
Back in the days of Jack Sparrow, sailboats couldn’t sail into the wind at all. When the wind was behind them, they raised the sails. If it moved to the front of the boat, they dropped sail and floated around or weighed anchor. Fortunately, there are very predictable and seasonable winds along the trade routes. You may have heard of these, they’re called the trade winds. So based on that predictability, boats could plan long voyages and know the wind would be favorable, ie to their back, for the most part. However, these sails still left something to be desired.
Science!
Much later on, we, as humans, began to understand the principles of aerodynamics. These principles applied to not just airplanes but to sailboats as well! On a sailing charter with Sail Savannah, you’ll notice that the sails aren’t flat, but they have a curvature to them.
The sails on a sailboat pointed into the wind act in the same way as an airplane wing. The air around the front side of the sails moves further and faster to catch up to the air moving along the inside of the sail. In the same way as a wing, this induces a pressure differential on the sails. The lower pressure on the front of the sails and higher pressure on the back means the boat starts moving forward! It truly is an amazing feat of engineering that Johnny Depp would’ve loved to have when he was outrunning those British ships!
If this all seems fairly confusing, don’t be alarmed, it is! Now that you have a basic idea of how sailing works, book a sailing charter with us and you’ll get a much better feel!
