RULE Lab

Kinematic beat — laylines, bias & shift

Port vs starboard beat to a windward mark on a square line — twist the wind or add a timed shift and the symmetry breaks.

Two kinematic boats beat to the same windward mark and tack onto the layline. The line is square and the boats are mirror images, so with steady wind they tie. Now twist it: their headings are stored relative to the wind, so turning the wind knob rotates the whole beat, and adding a Wind shift (drag its amber timeline marker) LIFTS the starboard boat and HEADS the port boat before they tack — so they no longer arrive together. Nothing is re-authored.

Play this on the board

Opens the animation on the boat-length grid — scrub it, edit it, or use it as a starting point. Free, no account needed.

upwindlaylinesbiaswind shiftkinematictactics

How it interacts with other rules