Gybe:
A jibe (US) or gybe (Britain) is a sailing maneuver whereby a sailing vessel reaching downwind turns its stern through the wind, such that the wind direction changes from one side of the boat to the other. For square-rigged ships, this maneuver is called wearing ship.
In this maneuver, the mainsail will cross the center of the boat while the jib is pulled to the other side of the boat. If a spinnaker is up, its pole will have to be manually moved to the other side, to remain opposite the mainsail. In a dinghy, raising the centerboard can increase the risk of capsizing during what can be a somewhat violent maneuver, although the opposite is true of a dinghy with a flat, planing hull profile: raising the centerboard reduces heeling moment during the maneuver and so reduces the risk of capsize. [Wikipedia]
Noted in “We can harness the solar wind to sail to the farthest corners of space,” David Hambling, NewScientist (31 October 2020, paywall):
As any sailor knows, the wind isn’t a perfect source of propulsion because you can only sail so close to it before you have to start tacking and gybing. This means any cosmic sailing ship would clip along nicely when going away from a star, but would struggle to turn back.
All about solar sails. In case you’re curious, here’s the The Planetary Society’s LightSail 2 mission page, although to my eye it appears to be broken at the moment. If you were wondering, its predecessor, LightSail 1, made orbit but suffered a malfunction and didn’t complete its mission. I also have a vague memory of The Planetary Society launching something else using an obsolete Soviet Union ICBM launch vehicle that blew up before payload release, but I can’t quite remember the details. Anyone?
