Sailing into the wind is actually low-effort, because the boat steers itself (until we have to tack, that is), but having wind in your face the whole time is tiring. Our wind meter doesn't work so we don't know how strong the wind was, but thinking it was mostly at 20 knots the whole way. We had some good waves on the transit, a rare thing for the waters between the mainland and Texada (in the summer it's often super calm and flat here).
At least it was very sunny today :>...
@rek don't you have automated steering, meaning something that keeps the speed vector at a specific angle?
Also, if you let the wind steer the boat, you lose speed.
Maybe for big voyages, it doesn't matter..