tigger

I just spend first few hours sailing around with the beginner ships and I have some questions. Is the current sailing model the final one? If so, there are some things that seem pretty strange to me, leading me to think that the existing sail model is perhaps overly simplistic. I might be wrong in my observations, but others likely see the same thing. As far as I can see, the wind speed seems constant, it is not shadowed by large waves, islands, other boats, or other sails. Further, I believe that wind speed and sea state are not correlated. I have never seen a sail flutter, when pointing into the wind, they are just flat. Further, they generate lift at very small angles of attack. It seems that I can beat almost 30 degrees into the wind on for-and-aft rigged vessels. (Unsure about fully rigged ones yet.) A simple explanation of why this is so seems to be lack of apparent wind: apparent wind direction traverses towards to bow with increased speed. My belief that wind is modelled as perfectly laminar flow of infinite speed but with finite generated lift is further reinforced by the fact that booms and sails appear to have no weight to them - a vessel on starboard tack rolled significantly to starboard will always keep it's mizzen or main fully filled with boom extending to port side. I guess these are the basic ones that bug me immediately. A reasonable airflow model should also fix a number of other ones.