Polar diagram (sailing)
A polar diagam, or polar plot, is a graph that shows a sailing boats potential wind speed over a range of wind and sail angles. It normally consists of the right side of a line chart with the x-axis representing the yacht speed and the y-axis representing the wind direction blowing from top to bottom. Several lines are normally drawn on the chart representing wind speed. To identify how fast a yacht could potentially go you select a particular wind speed curve and particular wind angle. Refer to the graph to the right for an example.
Polar diagrams are normally specific to a particular sailboat design and are created by the yacht designer. Polar diagrams can also be created a velocity prediction program or by a range of computer programs including iPolar and iRegatta.
