In one of his texts the great sailmaker Tom Whidden steals a moment from his consideration of materials and upkeep to list the r easons why people sail. But what Whidden seems to treasure most is knowing that every moment is a corner around which lies a new tangle of forces, a situation never encountered before, either by the sailor or possibly by anyone. For the master sailmaker it is the sense of feeling each moment flower and renew itself that makes sailing so absorbing.
Every voyage is a great novel with no last page.
Doing science means controlling all the factors but one, manipulating that one in a controlled fashion, and then reading the results. This is why sailboat designers still find themselves blindsided from time to time by developments like Australia II's winged keel. In theory in a computer every detail can be controlled and every change read. Once made visible, they become grist to the extraordinary pattern-finding and recognizing powers of the human brain. A specialist in thermodynamics, Richter started vectoring in on this subject in 1992, when he was volunteered to teach a course in the science of sailing.