Originally Posted by Team_Cat_Fever
Originally Posted by Jake
The less windspeed comment does make sense. As the water moves at 3 knots in the same direction as the wind, it's just like having 3 knots less wind. Consider your car on a conveyor belt. If the wind was 10mph and you are driving into it at 10 mph, you would normally experience 20mph of apparent wind. If your car was now on a conveyor belt that was moving 10mph in the opposite direction (so your car is now not making any forward progress), the apparent wind would be only 10.

It doesn't matter foiling or not - the speed vector of the water current that is parallel to the wind directly subtracts (or adds!) to the wind speed.


The foiling side of it is to get the lift, to free up hull drag. Which creates less effort on the sails/wing to move the boat faster.More flow over the foils increases lift ,but would also increase drag. The light air basis of the original statement may have some merit, but since SF is not known for light air (to the contrary) I don't think it pertains here. As your speed increases ( due to wind or current)so does your apparent wind. Don't let these non-multihull sailing commentators scramble your brain with their babble. All of you guys know better.


Hmmm...I'm not sure that the water still isn't the largest resistance to the boat speed even on foils...but I'll have to ponder that.


Jake Kohl