Forces on a sailboat

If a sailboat is cruising at constant velocity with the wind coming from directly behind it, what must be true about the forces acting on it?

The forces acting on the boat must be canceling each other out. The boat is not sinking or leaping into the air, so evidently the vertical forces are canceling out. The vertical forces are the downward gravitational force exerted by the planet earth and an upward force from the water.

The air is making a forward force on the sail, and if the boat is not accelerating horizontally then the water's backward frictional force must be canceling it out.

Contrary to Aristotle, more force is not needed in order to maintain a higher speed. Zero total force is always needed to maintain constant velocity. Consider the following made-up numbers:

	boat moving at a low, constant velocity	boat moving at a high, constant velocity
forward force of the wind on the sail . . .	10,000 N	20,000 N
backward force of the water on the hull . . .	-10, 000 N	-20, 000 N
total force on the boat . . .	0 N	0 N

The faster boat still has zero total force on it. The forward force on it is greater, and the backward force smaller (more negative), but that's irrelevant because Newton's first law has to do with the total force, not the individual forces.

This example is quite analogous to the one about terminal velocity of falling objects, since there is a frictional force that increases with speed. After casting off from the dock and raising the sail, the boat will accelerate briefly, and then reach its terminal velocity, at which the water's frictional force has become as great as the wind's force on the sail.