Olympic triangle be perfectly sharp, either, since it is a course. Traditionally the configuration of the triangle is an equilateral triangle (3 equal sides and 3 equal angles of 60 degrees) with a ratio of the windward leg to a reaching leg being 1:1. In that case the course length for the 9 legs described above is 9 times the length of the windward leg. The angle at each point of the triangle is 60 degrees. The windward leg is generally aligned with the average wind direction. Another configuration is a triangle with a right angle at the wing mark and 45
Malfatti circles corners of the triangle, the one with the smallest angle, and inscribes a third circle within the largest of the five remaining pieces. The difference in area for an equilateral triangle is small, just over 1%, but as pointed out, for an isosceles triangle with a very sharp apex, the optimal circles (stacked one atop each other above the base of the triangle) have nearly twice the area of the Malfatti circles. The problem of constructing three circles tangent to each other within a triangle was posed by the 18th-century Japanese mathematician Ajima Naonobu prior to the work of Malfatti,