The game uses a fairly life based Sailing technique... but doesn't use a Life based land distance. The waterways in the game are never wider than a really large river or small lake and so tacking is at times impossible and at other times so significantly time consuming as to be better to just paddle... or in some cases run. Sailing has it's issues

I've been on the water a few times now (on the new seed) and I have spent about 50% of the time paddling or tacking... even though only 30% of direction won't catch wind.

It's manageable but it would be nice if they tweaked it.