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This article is an excerpt from NauticEd’s online FREE Basic Sail Trim Course, an interactive online sailing course for beginner to intermediate sailors to learn the basics of sail trim. Or if you want to learn more, upgrade to the Skipper Course Bundle to become a competent sailor!

You can learn to sail and improve your sailing with NauticEd, the international leader in sailing education.

True Wind vs. Apparent Wind

We’ve created an interactive animation here so that you’ll instantly “get” what everyone tries to explain laboriously on a blackboard without much success.

Click and drag on the slider bar. As the car speeds up, the wind increases in velocity and the direction of origin feels like it moves forward. That’s apparent wind – it’s what your hand feels out of the window and on a boat it’s what the sails feel. If you stop the car, the apparent wind goes back to be the same as the true wind. The true wind stays the same regardless of your speed. That’s it! Now you understand true versus apparent wind.

Our more complex animations are best experienced in Chrome, Firefox, or Safari.

Figure 1.2-1 Animation of a Car Moving in Wind

Just one thing to note which you’ll use later on in this sailing course. Observe that the true wind is always coming more from the back end of the car. It’s the same on a boat. When you’re moving along and point to where the apparent wind is coming from, the real true wind will be coming from further towards the back of the boat. As a general (really general) rule of thumb (unless you’re going downwind), if you point about 15 degrees back from the apparent wind – that’s about (double about) the direction of the true wind. The true wind is said to be “Aft” of the apparent wind.

 

Learn Basic Sail Trim for FREE...

A FREE 1-2 hour course that teaches how to work with sails to get your boat moving. The free Basic Sail Trim Course is for any aspiring sailor as well as experienced sailors wanting to learn more. Or, consider upgrading to the Skipper Course Bundle to become a fully competent skipper!

Author

  • Grant Headifen

    My vision for NauticEd is to provide the highest quality sailing and boating education available - and deliver competence wherever sailors live and go.

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Last updated on August 12th, 2024