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

Originally posted by Oatsandbeans This is my last effort to explain this as simply as possible ( no mention of vectors I promise). Here is a simple analogy to consider. We take 10 young laser sailors that have never sailed on the sea and take them to the coast. We take them off shore where they cannot see the shoreline. We tell them that they have to race around some buoys as normal, but the buoys and start line will be moving. They think this is weird but they soon get the hang of it and they learn hat the moving buoys affect the lay lines and it is easy to over stand the marks if they haven't taken into account the speed and direction of the buoys. The smart ones also notice that the wind shifts when the buoys change direction. At the end of the week they all agree that this is just like sailing their lasers inland as long as you keep an eye on what those pesky buoys are up to! Think about it!

Good Idea, but the next question is totally relevant to this discussion and probably why we appear to differ.
So and It's a genuine question I don't sail Lasers and I didn't learn my sailcraft in a dinghy. So if there were a tide present just a straight cross tide, would they 'feel' the difference from one tack to the other?

I think the whole crux of this discussion because it involved a windsurfer is that the 'feel' of more actual power in your sail felt through your arms and feet, gives you an instinctive desire to seek it out that may not be present on a dinghy to the same amount. I know this to be true, but knowing the 'feel' is there, half the time because I know what the bloody tides doing at the venues I sail these days, the sensation is much much duller, but maybe, I only convince myself it's there.

Except in the odd circumstance like being able to fully wire on one tack but not on the other for instance where it's obvious.

Edited by iGRF - 04 Oct 19 at 9:19am

Originally posted by GarethT Nice to see we've reached a consensus, even if that is just to agree that we're all talking about different stuff. My thinking is about what happens at the periphery of the 'conveyor belt' model. If you can indulge me just a little more: Imagine you drop a boat into the middle of a channel with a current flowing. Assuming we agree with Newton, the boat will no instantaneously move at the speed of the current. When we reach a steady state the boat will be moving at the same speed as the current so clearly there will be not water flow over it when than has been achieved.. I'm thinking about what happens before the steady state. Whilst the force of the current is accelerating the boat, it will be flowing passed it, with the flow decreasing as the boat accelerates. Given that waves, gusts, shifts, depth, etc are always changing the 'steady state', I'm wondering if it is in those tiny nuanced moments that there could be a small impact beyond the apparent wind impact of the current.

Made me think of playing pooh sticks with the kids. And observations from that suggest it’s not boundary conditions/ change that creates the effect.

Originally posted by sargesail Originally posted by Oatsandbeans The marks are not untethered. The sailors have been told that they are attached to a mechanism that moves them around in a predetermined way. We actually know exactly what makes the marks appear to move through the water don't we ? I’m confused by your analogy now. I think you’re saying that you don’t tell them that it’s tide. That makes sense....I thought we were back in crazy space for awhile....my point was that without a land reference and with untethered marks they wouldn’t know that there was any change!

And that's the difference, on a board you can't help but know because you feel it in the sail. Put me or any half decent racing windsurfer, anywhere, no land, no marks, no external sign of anything other than the wind and the water and we'll give you a pretty good guess which way the current is flowing after a couple of tacks. So saying the water doesn't 'know' what's going, to me is an anathema.

Just sideways? What happens to the sail?

Believe me you can and I've sailed in more current than wind and you sense the power comes from the foil beneath your feet, not the one in your hand.