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Not bad but the author just makes it way complicated and sailing has been sort of understood for a few thousand years.

Sails work not the way you learned in primary school, a broad sheet and some wind (normally a fan) behind it. Sailboats have a headsail and the mainsail. The headsail channels the wind into the mainsail and it generates lift, but at a 90° angle it becomes thrust to a sailboat.

Want to go faster? Deploy the spinnaker (the huge bubble-like canvas) and it lifts the front of the boat out of the water and reducing drag. You can continue jibing but most people stop here because to change direction you have to take down and reconfigure the spinnaker.




The technique for sailing into the wind, however, is much less than a thousand years old (unless it’s yet another trick that the Greeks learned and then everyone else forgot until the Middle Ages). IIRC one of the first sailors who knew the trick was executed for witchcraft when the authorities finally caught up with him.


I'm not a fan of the lateen rig, but it is very low-tech effective and has been dated as far back as 300BC. See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateen_sail




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