How did wind powered ships sail against the current of a river, upstream?

[Barnabas]

Probably a stupid question, I guess the wind power is just strong enough. If not it would be impossible
I got the doubt when I read that for a ship in colonial times (before 1810) traveling from Asuncion of Paraguay to Buenos Aires took only two weeks, but the opposite, upstream, uo to 3 months.

[Berzerker]

isnt that called tacking? but not on rivers, they'd probably get out and pull

i doubt wind would be enough to go upstream

[Barnabas]

Pull a spanish galleon? isn't than only for smaller ships?

I guess they just stopped a lot of times and resumed when they had ideal wind

[Al B. Sure!]

Side to side. Tacking.

[KrazyHorse]

You can tack against the wind pretty easily. If you also have current against you it becomes more difficult. If the current is too strong relative to the wind it isimpossible

[KrazyHorse]

Side to side. Tacking.

Rich kids

[Al B. Sure!]

Rich kids

I looked it up

I've never actually been on a ship before

[Hauldren Collider]

Older ships had a lot more difficulty going upwind, but going upwind against the current is routine. Yes, it's called tacking. You can get within about 45 degrees of the direction of the wind and still move. So you zigzag.

The fastest point of sail is actually what's known as a beam reach--where you are at a 90 degree angle to the wind. I think this is because the sail acts like an airfoil.

[KrazyHorse]

There are at least 3 things wrong in your post.

[Hauldren Collider]

Really? This is based on my (in my opinion, fairly extensive) experience as a sailor. I won't pretend to know the exact physics. So would you like to clarify what was incorrect?

[loinburger]

I became an expert in tacking in Sid Meier's Pirates

And I doubt that a ship the size of a galleon would be able to sail upriver - it'd probably scrape against the bottom

[N35t0r]

Depending on the size of the river, obviously.

The Parana is pretty wide, and on it's lower section, has very little slope. IIRC, the average current speed is on the river is around 5 km/h (wiki doesn't know, so I can't confirm)

Bottom line, you need to travel faster than that, which means more than 2.7 knots, which isn't that much with favourable wind.

With adverse wind, the size and type of rigging of the ship affecs this a lot. In extreme cases, the ships can be towed from a rowboat or from shore, but generally they just waited for better weather conditions.

While modern sailboats can get as close as 45 degrees (or less, I've heard as little as 35 is possible) to the wind (it'll seem less on board, due to apparent wind), in the age of sail, square rigged ships fared much worse (in fact, when turning from port to starboard tack, they usually jibbed rather than tack, which is detrimental when tacking against the wind).

[KrazyHorse]

Really? This is based on my (in my opinion, fairly extensive) experience as a sailor. I won't pretend to know the exact physics. So would you like to clarify what was incorrect?

1) Given the context (old-time ships), I'd say that "routine" is a bit much for tacking against the wind and the current of a river (which can be quite strong)
2) The fastest point of sail is somewhere between beam reach and running downwind. It depends on a lot of things
3) "because it behaves like an airfoil" is either wrong or unnecessarily broad depending on how you read the context

BTW, you're undoubtedly a better sailor than me. I only have a dozen or so outings (back from when I was ~13)

[Tuberski]

Ultima IV sailing:

Into wind 1/4 movement
Beam: Full movement
With the wind 3/4 movement.

So, beam is the best.

ACK!