Sailing Directly Upwind

[ancient kayaker]

Bill: finally I will meet someone who drives as slowly as I do. Beer I can manage, not much sailing in Alliston but Barrie and Lake Simcoe are only a half-hour away if we can find a suitable boat. Or I can host a small army with kayaks and canoes ...

Geez Dave, where were you at the start of all this when I was trying to figure out how to do it? You could have saved us a whole week of analysis, argument, and passion that could have been put to better use

I doubt my little boat will have enough speed to generate significant apparent wind. I could experiment with a bean diet I suppose

Mostly I just want to see if it works and produce a workable alternative to floating windmills. I'm also interested to know how such a rig will behave on other points of sail. Once I've done that the torch must pass from my failing grasp ...

[Dave Gudeman]

I just realized that my speculation about optimal efficiency was nonsense. What I was thinking is that this device doesn't have the inefficiencies of sails on high and low points of sail, and it doesn't have the inefficiencies of rotating foils. But it obviously has its own inefficiencies in the pauses at each end.

Kayaker, since I didn't contribute anything except a summary of all that analysis and argument (sans passion) I doubt that I could have saved you anything by coming earlier.

When on a project, a bean diet has the additional advantage that it discourages people from hanging around and trying to talk to you while you are working .

I used to have a dog who would be laying on the floor half-asleep, then fart, then jerk his head up and back towards his tail as if startled. He would have this sleepy, puzzled look on his face that used to crack me up every time, "What the heck was that? It sounded like an explosion coming out of my anus! Well, that can't be. Must have been dreaming."

[ancient kayaker]

An old friend who used to breed dogs had a favorite old labrador he used to leave with me when he went hunting with his younger dogs. The dog would fart then have a coughing fit; we suspected he was trying to cover up. Later (about 20 years later) my then teenage daughter admitted she had been feeding him buttered crackers behind my back.