A boat is heading due east at 35 km/hr (relative to the water). The current is moving toward the southwest at 9 km/hr.
The technique to doing vector problems is to recognize that (a) one can break any vector down into perpendicular components by utilizing the Pythagorean theorem and trigonometric functions, and (b) one can simply add the vector parts along each perpendicular axis independently.
Lets bring this problem into the Cartesian coordinate system where we set :
A boat is heading due east at 25 km per hr (relative to the water). The current is moving toward the southwest at 10 km per hr.
The speed of a boat in still water heading due east is given. We have a current in the water, moving at a certain speed, in a certain direction, that affects the speed and direction of the boat. We find the vector that represents the actual movement of the boat in the current and calculate the actual speed of the boat in the current.