That's what happens when you're too proud to fire up the engine!

Edgar wrote:
Read Alan Villiers "The set of the sails" (qv.)
"My progress was one long dour beat. To wind'ard! To wind'ard! Day after
day. week after week: sometimes after a week's hard beating I had made sixty
miles..."


....

And what does this mean for the VMG to Windward? The cosine of 6
points is .38, so if she were making 6 knots, the VMG would be 2.3
knots. With half a point of leeway, that becomes 1.75 knots, and with
a full point its only 1.2 knots. In other words, a ship beating into
the wind will make some headway, but it might only be 30 to 40 miles
in a full day. And its easy to see that with rough seas, or an
adverse current, or even a minor mishap, all headway for a watch could
be lost.