Michelle Slade
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Apr 7, 2010, 1:26 PM
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re, Running Faster than the Wind (Scuttlebutt 3065)
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* From Chris McKesson, Naval Architect:
In 1974 I was a bright-eyed High School student, who dreamed of becoming a Naval Architect. As part of my nerd-hood, I took my girlfriend to the 5th Annual Symposium on Sailing (“The Ancient Interface”) held by the American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics.
At that meeting two of the presentations demonstrated clear feasibility of faster-than-the-wind dead downwind sailing in a windmill. In fact, one of the presentation had impressive movie footage of a model yacht doing exactly that. For your amusement, I attached PDF copies of the two papers presented at that symposium (note: one of the two got lost...click here for the one that was retrieved):
“Performance Characteristics of Ice Boats and an Ideal Windmill Vehicle” by Peter McCrary
And
“On Taking Energy From the Wind” by Andrew Bauer
Note the conclusions, particular from Bauer: “Windpowered vehicles can be built to travel in any direction with respect to the wind. The windmill and propeller powered vehicles may travel faster than the wind in any direction, whereas the sail-only powered vehicles cannot travel either directly upwind or directly downwind faster than the wind…”
Nice to see their ideas taking form. Too bad it took 36 years.
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