A helpful way to understand sailing into the wind (for me at least) is to think of a stationary wind turbine producing eg. 2MW of power. Now if you were to moun

A helpful way to understand sailing into the wind (for me at least) is to think of a stationary wind turbine producing eg. 2MW of power. Now if you were to mount that turbine on the roof of your electric car, that 2MW is more than enough to power the car at great speed in a windward direction. This seems to be the same concept except with a pure mechanical linkage.