Re: sailing upwind?

[William Beaty <billb@ESKIMO.COM>]

On Thu, 30 Dec 1999, brian whatcott wrote:

>  I can visualize the water prop being scaled proportionate to the air/water
> density ratio, and I finally see that I am trying to minimise generation
> and transmission losses so as to arrive at a system that effectively uses
> an air prop to drive an air prop in hopes of gaining propulsion thereby.

Hmmm.  What if a wind turbine was mounted upon a car, and the rotating
prop was attached to the wheels via a stepdown gearbox.  With sufficient
stepdown in RPM, couldn't the car drive (slowly) into the wind?  Or does
this create a perpetual motion machine, where the car speeds up, which
increases the relative wind, which speeds up the car even more, etc.

Back to the original question...  suppose we build a machine that contains
a pair of sailboats with sliding connection to a long rod.  Orient the rod
perpendicular to the wind, start with the sailboats near each other and at
opposite tacking angles, then let the whole assembly go.  When the boats
reach the ends of the rod, they tack again.  Each boat never sails
directly into the wind, but the "machine" as a whole does so.


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