The sailboat is a type of boat whose propulsion is mainly entrusted to the exploitation of the wind and in which the engine only has a supporting action especially in maneuvers in the port.

The old legislation defined a sailing boat with an auxiliary engine as a pleasure craft equipped with an engine (inside or outside the boat) with power expressed in hp. less than 50% of the sail area measured in square meters.

The first examples of sailing date back to 6000 BC. but the Egyptian people were the first to make intensive and well-documented use from 4000 BC.

The first triangular sails, called "Latin sails", were probably of Arab inspiration and made their appearance in the Mediterranean as early as the 9th century.

The Latin sails spread on the most modern boats and often went alongside the traditional square sails which continued to be used throughout the "golden age of sailing" (from the 16th to the 19th century).

In 1875 only three countries continued to build sailing ships: Canada, Norway and Italy.

The common sailboat comprises eight essential parts: hull, tiller, rudder, mainsail, mast, boom, jib and keel.

The hull is the shell of the boat, which contains all the internal components. Its symmetrical shape balances the sailboat and reduces drag, or the backward pull caused by friction, as it moves in the water. Inside of the hull in the stern, or back of the boat, is the tiller, which is attached to the rudder in the water. The mainsail is the larger sail that captures the bulk of the wind power necessary to propel the sailboat. Its vertical side attaches to the mast, a long upright pole, and its horizontal side secures to the boom, a long pole parallel to the deck. The jib is the smaller, fixed triangular sail that adds additional power for the mainsail. The keel, a long, slim plank that juts out from the bottom of the hull, provides an underwater balancing force that keeps the boat from tipping over.

Floating depends on two things: displacement and density. Archimedes' principle, which explains the concept of buoyancy, states that in order for an object to float, it must displace an amount of water equal to its weight. As a sailboat's weight pushes downward and displaces water beneath it, an upward force equal to that weight holds the boat up.

Sailing a boat is simple when you're navigating downwind with the wind at your back. You let out the mainsail perpendicular to the wind to capture the most energy. As the wind presses directly into the sails to make them puff out, that natural force propels the boat forward.

Sailing has been an Olympic discipline since 1896, where the first Olympic sports was held in Athens, Greece. It was scheduled as the first Olympic program at that time, but due to very bad weather, it was called off. It used to be called as “yachting” until 2000 when the sport was re-named as “sailing.”