Sailing
Sailing employs the wind—acting on sails, wing sails or kites—to propel a craft on the surface of the water, on ice or on land over a chosen course, which is often part of a larger plan of navigation.
From prehistory until the second half of the 19th century, sailing craft were the primary means of maritime trade and transportation; exploration across the seas and oceans was reliant on sail for anything other than the shortest distances. Naval power in this period used sail to varying degrees depending on the current technology, culminating in the gun-armed sailing warships of the Age of Sail. Sail was slowly replaced by steam as the method of propulsion for ships over the latter part of the 19th century – seeing a gradual improvement in the technology of steam through a number of developmental steps. Steam allowed scheduled services that ran at higher average speeds than sailing vessels. Large improvements in fuel economy allowed steam to progressively outcompete sail in, ultimately, all commercial situations, giving ship-owning investors a better return on capital.
In the 21st century, most sailing represents a form of recreation or sport. Recreational sailing or yachting can be divided into racing and cruising. Cruising can include extended offshore and ocean-crossing trips, coastal sailing within sight of land, and daysailing.
Sailing relies on the physics of sails as they derive power from the wind, generating both lift and drag. On a given course, the sails are set to an angle that optimizes the development of wind power, as determined by the apparent wind, which is the wind as sensed from a moving vessel. The forces transmitted via the sails are resisted by forces from the hull, keel, and rudder of a sailing craft, by forces from skate runners of an iceboat, or by forces from wheels of a land sailing craft which are steering the course. This combination of forces means that it is possible to sail an upwind course as well as downwind. The course with respect to the true wind direction is called a point of sail. Conventional sailing craft cannot derive wind power on a course with a point of sail that is too close into the wind.
History
Throughout history, sailing was a key form of propulsion that allowed for greater mobility than travel over land. This greater mobility increased capacity for exploration, trade, transport, warfare, and fishing, especially when compared to overland options.Until the significant improvements in land transportation that occurred during the 19th century, if water transport was an option, it was faster, cheaper and safer than making the same journey by land. This applied equally to sea crossings, coastal voyages and use of rivers and lakes. Examples of the consequences of this include the large grain trade in the Mediterranean during the classical period. Cities such as Rome were totally reliant on the delivery by sailing ships of the large amounts of grain needed. It has been estimated that it cost less for a sailing ship of the Roman Empire to carry grain the length of the Mediterranean than to move the same amount 15 miles by road. Rome consumed about 150,000 tons of Egyptian grain each year over the first three centuries AD.
A similar but more recent trade, in coal, was from the mines situated close to the River Tyne to London – which was already being carried out in the 14th century and grew as the city increased in size. In 1795, 4,395 cargoes of coal were delivered to London. This would have needed a fleet of about 500 sailing colliers. This quantity had doubled by 1839.
Exploration and research
The earliest image suggesting the use of sail on a boat may be on a piece of pottery from Mesopotamia, dated to the 6th millennium BCE. The image is thought to show a bipod mast mounted on the hull of a reed boat – no sail is depicted. The earliest representation of a sail, from Egypt, is dated to circa 3100 BCE. The Nile is considered a suitable place for early use of sail for propulsion. This is because the river's current flows from south to north, whilst the prevailing wind direction is north to south. Therefore, a boat of that time could use the current to go north – an unobstructed trip of 750 miles – and sail to make the return trip. Evidence of early sailors has also been found in other locations, such as Kuwait, Turkey, Syria, Minoa, Bahrain, and India, among others.Austronesian peoples used sails from some time before 2000 BCE. Their expansion from what is now Southern China and Taiwan started in 3000 BCE. Their technology came to include outriggers, catamarans, and crab claw sails, which enabled the Austronesian Expansion at around 3000 to 1500 BCE into the islands of Maritime Southeast Asia, and thence to Micronesia, Island Melanesia, Polynesia, and Madagascar. Since there is no commonality between the boat technology of China and the Austronesians, these distinctive characteristics must have been developed at or some time after the beginning of the expansion. They traveled vast distances of open ocean in outrigger canoes using navigation methods such as stick charts. The windward sailing capability of Austronesian boats allowed a strategy of sailing to windward on a voyage of exploration, with a return downwind either to report a discovery or if no land was found. This was well suited to the prevailing winds as Pacific islands were steadily colonized.
By the time of the Age of Discovery—starting in the 15th century—square-rigged, multi-masted vessels were the norm and were guided by navigation techniques that included the magnetic compass and making sightings of the sun and stars that allowed transoceanic voyages.
During the Age of Discovery, sailing ships figured in European voyages around Africa to China and Japan; and across the Atlantic Ocean to North and South America. Later, sailing ships ventured into the Arctic to explore northern sea routes and assess natural resources. In the 18th and 19th centuries sailing vessels made Hydrographic surveys to develop charts for navigation and, at times, carried scientists aboard as with the voyages of James Cook and the Second voyage of HMS Beagle with naturalist Charles Darwin.
Commerce
In the early 1800s, fast blockade-running schooners and brigantines—Baltimore Clippers—evolved into three-masted, typically ship-rigged sailing vessels with fine lines that enhanced speed, but lessened capacity for high-value cargo, like tea from China. Masts were as high as and were able to achieve speeds of, allowing for passages of up to per 24 hours. Clippers yielded to bulkier, slower vessels, which became economically competitive in the mid 19th century. Sail plans with just fore-and-aft sails, or a mixture of the two emerged. Coastal top-sail schooners with a crew as small as two managing the sail handling became an efficient way to carry bulk cargo, since only the fore-sails required tending while tacking and steam-driven machinery was often available for raising the sails and the anchor.Iron-hulled sailing ships represented the final evolution of sailing ships at the end of the Age of Sail. They were built to carry bulk cargo for long distances in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They were the largest of merchant sailing ships, with three to five masts and square sails, as well as other sail plans. They carried bulk cargoes between continents. Iron-hulled sailing ships were mainly built from the 1870s to 1900, when steamships began to outpace them economically because of their ability to keep a schedule regardless of the wind. Steel hulls also replaced iron hulls at around the same time. Even into the twentieth century, sailing ships could hold their own on transoceanic voyages such as Australia to Europe, since they did not require bunkerage for coal nor fresh water for steam, and they were faster than the early steamers, which usually could barely make. Ultimately, the steamships' independence from the wind and their ability to take shorter routes, passing through the Suez and Panama Canals, made sailing ships uneconomical.
Naval power
Until the general adoption of carvel-built ships that relied on an internal skeleton structure to bear the weight of the ship and for gun ports to be cut in the side, sailing ships were just vehicles for delivering fighters to the enemy for engagement. Early Phoenician, Greek, Roman galleys would ram each other, then pour onto the decks of the opposing force and continue the fight by hand, meaning that these galleys required speed and maneuverability. This need for speed translated into longer ships with multiple rows of oars along the sides, known as biremes and triremes. Typically, the sailing ships during this time period were the merchant ships.By 1500, Gun ports allowed sailing vessels to sail alongside an enemy vessel and fire a broadside of multiple cannon. This development allowed for naval fleets to array themselves into a line of battle, whereby, warships would maintain their place in the line to engage the enemy in a parallel or perpendicular line.
Modern applications
While the use of sailing vessels for commerce or naval power has been supplanted with engine-driven vessels, there continue to be commercial operations that take passengers on sailing cruises. Modern navies also employ sailing vessels to train cadets in seamanship. Recreation or sport accounts for the bulk of sailing in modern boats.Recreation
Recreational sailing can be divided into two categories, day-sailing, where one gets off the boat for the night, and cruising, where one stays aboard.Day-sailing primarily affords experiencing the pleasure of sailing a boat. No destination is required. It is an opportunity to share the experience with others. A variety of boats with no overnight accommodations, ranging in size from to over, may be regarded as day sailors.
Cruising on a sailing yacht may be either near-shore or passage-making out of sight of land and entails the use of sailboats that support sustained overnight use. Coastal cruising grounds include areas of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, Northern Europe, Western Europe and islands of the North Atlantic, West Africa and the islands of the South Atlantic, the Caribbean, and regions of North and Central America. Passage-making under sail occurs on routes through oceans all over the world. Circular routes exist between the Americas and Europe, and between South Africa and South America. There are many routes from the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and Asia to island destinations in the South Pacific. Some cruisers circumnavigate the globe.