For some unknown reason, my font is purple and underlined. Well, it was. Now I made it blue! Very fitting if I do say so myself.
The point I want to make today is that there is actual Physics in Sailing. It is called Lift. Lift is what makes planes fly and apparently allows sailboats to move upwind. In short, lift is when air particles passing through the sails creates a forward suction because of the different air pressures being created on opposite sides of the sail. On the arcing part of the sail, air particles have a longer distance to travel over the same amount of time as the air particles on the concave side of the sail, which have less distance to travel. Therefore, there is low air pressure on the arced side and high air pressure on the concave. In that sense, even though the wind is pushing against the sailboat, when a sailboat tacks- zig zagging across the water when traveling upwind in order to move forward- the wind is now in reality pulling the sailboat because of that suction.
Isn't that cool? Or did you not understand at all? Oh, what does that matter? I wrote it in my very own words! That means I'm learning!
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