| Show outstripping THE WIND an of how a yacht aay accomplish com feat every yachtsman knows that a ship can sail faster than the wind that is i to say if the wind is blowing ten knots an hour a ship may he making twelve or fifteen knots an hour now it is obvious that if the ship is sailing straight before the wind it cannot at tho utmost travel faster than the wind itself is blowing as a matter of fact it will travel much more slowly if on the other hand the ship is sailing at an angle with tha wind it seems at first sight that the waud must act with less effect than before but as a matter of fact the ship not only sails more quickly than before but more quickly than the wind it pelf ia blowing let us consider the difficulty in the light of the following experiment place a ball at one side of the billiard table and with the cue not held in the ordinary manner but lengthwise from end to end of the table shove the ball across the cloth the cue here represents the wind and the ball the ship sailing directly before it the ball of course travels at the same rate as the cue now suppose a groove in which the ball may cut diagonally across the table from one corner pocket to the other if the ball be now placed at one end of the groove and the cue held horizontally parallel with the long aidea and moved forward across the width of the table as before abo ball will travel along the groove and along the cue diagonally across the table in the same time as the cue takes to move across the width of the table this is the case of the ship sailing at an angle with the direction of the wind the groove is considerably longer than the width of the table more than double as long in fact the ball therefore travels much faster than the cue which impels it since it covers more than double the distance in the same time it is in precisely the same manner that a tacking ship is enabled to sail faster than the wind |
