40. Sailing Closehauled

A good illustration and exercise in adding vectors is provided by a sailboat. The situations of "running with the wind", sailing crosswind, and sailing "close to the wind" are well reviewed in Epstein's Thinking Physics, 2nd Ed., pp 32 - 37. All of these examples can be demonstrated on the air track using a glider with sail and an electric fan to produce the wind. You can actually get the glider to move forward about 45 degrees into the wind.