Tacking—a maneuver used to sail a boat against the wind, changing direction in a zig-zag fashion—is one of the most difficult but necessary sailing maneuvers. While tacking is common, the movement of the sails and wind forces during the turn are not well understood.
A new study by New York University and University of Michigan mathematicians addresses these matters head-on.
It offers a detailed characterization of how sails behave during a wide range of tacking motions and with an array of sail types. Its findings serve as both a framework for improved sail designs and a pathway for making today’s autonomous sailboats—vital in oceanographic research—more efficient and reliable when changing direction in unpredictable wind conditions.
“Tacking is more than just a turn,” explains Christiana Mavroyiakoumou , an instructor at NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and the lead author of the paper, which appears in the journal Physical Review Fluids. “It is a high-stakes maneuver where sail performance can make or break a race or a sailing journey in general. By uncovering what determines a successful flip and how long it takes, this research gives sailors and engineers a new resource for mastering the wind.”
“There has been a lot of work on optimizing the shapes of the sails and hulls of sailboats, but much remains to be understood about fluid-structure interactions during unsteady maneuvers,” adds University of Michigan Professor Silas Alben , who authored the paper with Mavroyiakoumou. “The tacking maneuver is one important example where simplified modeling can help us understand the basic physics.”
The researchers studied the dynamics of sail movement during a tacking maneuver: when the sail angle of attack, or angle between the wind and a sail’s chord line, is reversed in order to sail upwind. In successful tacking, the sail flips around to adopt its mirror-image shape while in unsuccessful tacking the sail remains stuck in a state close to its initial shape.
The researchers used a combination of mathematical modeling and numerical simulations to better understand how sails interact with the background wind during tacking, which was modeled by examining how a sail moves in the wind and how the wind changes in response. Overall, their computations revealed the following:
The researchers add that, beyond competitive sailing, this research could potentially benefit automated sailing vehicles under different wind conditions.
This research was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation’s Division of Mathematical Sciences (DMS-2204900).
Mavroyiakoumou describes her work in this video (caption: Christiana Mavroyiakoumou, an instructor at NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, describes the dynamics of successful tacking—a common, but difficult, sailing maneuver—at Conservatory Water in New York City's Central Park. Video by Jonathan King/NYU).
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Physical Review Fluids
Computational simulation/modeling
Sail dynamics during tacking maneuvers
17-Jul-2025