Lee-Bow..... Windsurfers...etc (Dons tin hat)

16 pages and has anyone actually learnt anything that could make them a better sailor? I fear all that's happened here is that GRF has another unrelated and misguiding term to throw about in these threads. 

Provoking a bit of debate and playing devils advocate can be good. But this thread is so polluted with dumb statements I doubt any passer by could find it of any use. If there are lurkers here who have picked anything up I would love to hear from you!

I wouldn't call anyone a 'dick' who doesn't understand why the 'pinch up above the tide to change flow' lee bow is ridiculous. But, they are either novice, or dim. Neither makes them a bad person, however. 

But the trouble is, the whole discussion gets bogged down in this dunning-kruger effect where those with little knowledge are over confident in their understanding. But what's worse, they fear learning more, because the more they learn the less it seems they know and the stupider they feel. If starting to learn about something makes you feel dumb then you need quite a lot of perseverance to get through that. Eventually, a lot of people just don't bother. Effectively, some people are just more happy being confident in their misconceptions and assigning the unknown to myths and magic. You can't change these peoples minds. 

Tidal wind shift:

Lumped in with all this is how the tide changes the true wind (over water). Increasing, decreasing, backing and veering as the vectors change. It's not rocket science, but requires some thought. But it's amazing how few even very good sailors have fully thought through its ramifications. But the reason why is obvious. Current has a vector which is normally orders of magnitude lower than the ground wind, so the shifts produced at most championship venues are quite small. Secondly, you don't have to understand what is producing the shifts to feel them on the water and sail to them just as someone who understood why they were occurring would.

As it happens, I drew all the vectors in this thread. Read it. Obviously, despite asserting they were false, no one ever sat down and did the working to show why, nor did they present anything to support the 'pinch up over tidal flow'. Odd that. 

It is not even wrong.

It makes me cringe. Just like H2 sat on the pontoon with his dagger-board between his legs. 

I did see a bear grylls type programme once where they used it to get heavy equipment across a fast flowing river. 

I've never heard of this as ferry gliding. But if there are ferries which work like that, then cool. 

Here's some people doing it. It's irrelevant.