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Comment by MichaelCollins | Hacker News Reader

This is why bathrooms on ships are called the head. They were placed at the front of sailing ships so the wind would blow the smells away.

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So, the idea that sails work by the wind blowing on them from behind is a common misconception. They actually work like an airplane wing in some ways.

I'm going to skip trying to remember all the technical details from the last time I sailed anything and just say that the head is at the head of the boat, but it has nothing to do with "blowing the smells away". Boats do not always sail the direction the wind is blowing. We'd have never got anywhere before marine engines if that were the case.

You're speaking universally, but what you're describing is only true about fore-and-aft rigged sails.

During the "Age of Sail" those were not common for oceangoing ships, which predominately used square rigged sails and would primarily or exclusively run downwind.

Square rigs do not sail directly downwind, at least not if they have multiple masts. You always sail at an angle and tack the yards appropriately. Otherwise the foremast’s sails would luff.

Square masts can sail upwind, it's not as effective but you can get 50 or 55° into the wind.

Sure, they “primarily run downwind”... the same way cars “primarily drive on asphalt.” It's not that they can't drive on gravel or brick or off-road, it's that during the Age of Sail the main priority was swift conveyance and obviously if that's your priority you try to get back on the highway as soon as you can.

One time sailing with my dad we tried to launch from a sand spit after the wind came up. Each time we tried we'd get blown back on. We then tried doing it with the sails down and paddling like mad and we made it. We found we could point about 45 degrees into the wind with the sails still down. And so we just tacked across the bay to the dock like that.

I once tried tacking against the wind through a gap between two lakes that acted like a funnel. The funnel effect created such strong waves that I couldn't get my boat to turn into the wind. Eventually I gave up and tried it on the motor, but it was too weak to power against the waves and the wind. So what I ended up doing was sailing, tacking, but using the motor to force the boat through the wind for the tack. That worked, but it was one of the weirder hacks I've done in sailing.

(My English sailing terminology might be incorrect; I'm Dutch, and sailing terminology is the only area of language that I only know in Dutch.)

Not sure why you're objecting, here. No one said "directly," and "primarily" specifically leaves room for the fact that they could sail into the wind.

Maybe you missed the context: the comment responded to the claim that it's a "misconception" that "sails work by the wind blowing on them from behind."

> Boats do not always sail the direction the wind is blowing. We'd have never got anywhere before marine engines if that were the case.

Seafarers would not learn how to sail against the wind until the early Christian era. Still, they got somewhere even before that.

Polynesian expansion to Eastern Islands and Hawaii wasn't a small feat.

> Seafarers would not learn how to sail against the wind until the early Christian era. Still, they got somewhere even before that.

You're referring to the Lateen sail that appeared in the eastern Mediterranean as early as 100AD, but it was imported from possibly Egypt or the Persian Gulf, so its origin is older and elusive. But the spritsail can also sail upwind and is far older, only appearing in Greco-Roman navigation in the 2nd century BC.

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