Aboard a sailboat, when the wind changes unfavourably for our course, we can adjust the sails. We perform the operation of pulling a rope—but when the rope is fastened to the sail as a sheet, pulling the rope means adjusting the sail, while also paying attention to the wind, the sea current, the movements of the boat. The rope-with-sail is the very rope we are pulling: a sociomaterial entanglem...

Two current Stanford Yacht Research projects are presented, both related to the analysis and design of upwind sails, and part of a larger research effort to develop efficient and robust sail and hull shape optimisation methods. First, we discuss the in-house development of a methodology to predict and improve the flying shape and forces on America's Cup sails. We adapted and parallelized a 3D u...

The use of computational techniques that solve the Euler or the Navier-Stokes equations are increasingly being used by competing syndicates in races like the Americas Cup. For sail configurations, this desire stems from a need to understand the influence of the mast on the boundary layer and pressure distribution on the main sail, the effect of camber and planform variations of the sails on the...

Sailing into the Future: A Program Evaluation of the Summer Academy to Inspire Learning is a statistical analysis of the SAIL program began by the economics department of the University of Oregon. This program is designed to encourage pursuit of higher education among local low-income students. The data is divided into two cohorts: a nonrandomized older cohort, and a randomized younger cohort. ...

Setting sail on a new career path as a nurse responsible for the health of the passengers and crew of cruise liners can be hugely satisfying.