2021-07-12

optimal sizes of sails?

I spent some time in-between vacationing to look at the relative sizes of sails and keels on sailboats (yes, sailboats). I find that a boat sailing cross-wind sails fastest when the ram-pressure force prefactor (effective area times density) of the sail and the keel are comparable. That is, you want the effective area of the sail to be something like 800 times larger than the effective area of the keel! Strange, but maybe not false for the fastest competition sailboats?

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