Sunday, April 23, 2006

Extreme Geeking Out

My recent series of posts about the physics of sails has attracted some gentle ribbing from Joe while Bonnie in apparent admiration characterized it as "geeking out".

My own muddled musings on this subject - as much to try and get the issue straight in my own head as anything else - are nothing compared to the nerdy noodlings at this thread on Sailing Anarchy which is about the issue of whether you can construct a wind-powered craft that can sail dead downwind faster than the windspeed. You may think the answer is obvious but don't jump to conclusions until you have read all 1174 posts that have been made so far by geekier folk than me or any of my commenters, and still there is no consensus on the question.

If you feel compelled to add more geeky posts to the discussion on Dead Downwind please do it over at SA, not here. If you want to comment about SA or geeks (or idiots that go sailing their Lasers when the forecast is for rain, thunderstorms, floods and 35 knots) then feel free to do so here.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The line between fanatic and idiot can be so fine at times... but unless you're actually hit with lightning, going out in somewhat questionable conditions can be so worthwhile.

EVK4 said...

Sailing Anarchy...what a place. The best sailors in the world post there and so does everybody who wants to pretend to be amongst the best sailors in the world.

I purposefully avoided that thread knowing that it is probably going to be 95% bs but the rules threads are usually very enlightening.

Post a Comment