Thanks! I don’t have a speedometer on the sailboat, but I know I can’t trust my senses either. Maybe I can find an app for boat speed. You can’t really eyeball it.
I was sailing my windmill with my son. He had almost no experience and we were on a lake with the wind strong in spots, and blocked by the shore in others. We had a nice run out, I was on the jib, my son at the tiller. We turned back to sail DDW. My son said, "We lost the wind." He sounded so disappointed.
I said, No, there's plenty of wind, you just can't feel it because we're sailing with it."
He argued that we weren't going anywhere, so there was no wind.
Being on a lake in the North Woods, I pointed to all the pine needles rushing backwards to illustrate how fast we were going. He was still skeptical until we hit a submerged rock with the daggerboard. I went flying, my shin bruised on the twart as I landed in the bow.
My son looked at the huge black and blue knot distorting on my shin and asked, "Did you break your leg?"
"No, it's just bruised, but now do you see how fast we were going?"
-Will