In this series, we’ve already covered tacks and jibes. Now for a few words on spinnakers. Fortunately, for the most part, the key principles apply to both asymmetrical and symmetrical spinnakers. If ...

Spinnaker staysails have three specific tasks: cleaning up the wind going around the front of the mainsail, moving the center of effort forward to help balance the helm and adding more sail area.

We've long used the brain as inspiration for computers, but the SpiNNaker supercomputer, switched on this month, is probably the closest we’ve come to recreating it in silicon. Now scientists hope to ...