The Vector math explanation YOU gave is wrong. They definitely did not say what you said. The vector has effect, but that is it. It does not define the speed. It is akin to angle of attack. However, the primary force is Bernoulli effect. To that end, the shape of the sail has a large effect as it forms the wing. Trade-off losses versus lift for maximum speed for given hull drag at a given speed. Having a hard time believing you are a physicist since you don’t seem to have understood the article and certainly not to any level of nuance.
Anyone who reads that article, even laypeople, will see that you are wrong.
https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.2883908
Moving air has kinetic energy that can, through its interaction with the sails, be used to propel a sailboat. Like airplane wings, sails exploit Bernoulli’s principle. An airplane wing is designed to cause the air moving over its top to move faster than the air moving along its undersurface. That results in lower pressure above the wing than below it. The pressure difference generates the lift provided by the wing.
The wind is doing two things,” said Margot Gerritsen, an engineering professor at Stanford. “It’s pushing, but there’s also a part of this wind that is dragging. That dragging is done with this force called lift."
“Lift,” in the case of a sailboat, doesn’t mean “up” although it does in the case of an airplane. In fact, the physics that allow an airplane to fly are the same physics that allow a sailboat to travel faster than the wind. The difference is that airplanes lift up off the ground, and sailboats lift parallel to the ground— as if they’re flying sideways.
