Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan accepted the Republican National Convention’s nomination for vice president in August 2012, pointing out failures of the incumbent Democratic administration with a nautical political simile:
 
“It all started off with stirring speeches, Greek columns, the thrill of something new. Now all that’s left is a presidency adrift, surviving on slogans that already seem tired, grasping at a moment that has already passed, like a ship trying to sail on yesterday’s wind.”
 
Louis L’Amour (1908-1988), an author of Western fiction novels, wrote “All that was long ago, and a mill does not turn upon water that is past, nor does a ship sail with the winds of yesterday” in 1975, and wrote “A ship does not sail with yesterday’s wind” in 1984. (“Water that is past will not turn the mill” is an old Spanish proverb.)
 
William Edward Hartpole Lecky (1838-1903), an Irish historian, used the “winds of yesterday”/“yesterday’s wind” political simile in 1892: 
 
“The dangers of the time come from other quarters; other tendencies prevail, other tasks remain to be accomplished; and a public man who in framing his course followed blindly in the steps of the heroes or reformers of the past would be like a mariner who set his sails to the winds of yesterday.”
   
 
Google Books
The Political Value of History
By William Edward Hartpole Lecky
London: Edward Arnold
1892
Pg. 19:
The dangers of the time come from other quarters; other tendencies prevail, other tasks remain to be accomplished; and a public man who in framing his course followed blindly in the steps of the heroes or reformers of the past would be like a mariner who set his sails to the winds of yesterday.
 
Google Books
The Church at Home:
A manual for family worship and home teaching
By John Heyl Vincent
New York, NY: Hunt & Eaton
1893
Pg. 473:
Water that is past will not turn the mill. — Spanish.
 
Google Books
The Meaning of Selfhood and Faith in Immortality
By Eugene William Lyman
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
1928
Pg. 21:
A sailing vessel is becalmed unless the wind is actually pressing upon its sails. The winds of yesterday and the winds of tomorrow cannot help to drive it forward today.
 
Google Books
Rivers West: A Novel
By Louis L’Amour
New York, NY: Bantam Books
1975
Pg. ?:
All that was long ago, and a mill does not turn upon water that is past, nor does a ship sail with the winds of yesterday.
   
Google Books
Working with the Elderly in their Residences
By Dean Tjosvold and Mary M. Tjosvold
New York, NY: Praeger
1983
Pg. 17:
“Also, sail on the winds of today, never mind the winds of yesterday or tomorrow. These are things you can use throughout your life.”
 
Google Books
The Walking Drum
By Louis L’Amour
New York, NY: Bantam Books
1984
Pg. ?:
“A ship does not sail with yesterday’s wind,” Red Mark replied.
   
30 June 1997, Lethbridge (Alberta) Herald, pg. A10:
In spile of their importance it would have proved an expensive act in futility…like trying to sail a ship on yesterdays’ wind.
(Letter to the editor by Katherine Hadford—ed.)
 
Power Line
POSTED ON AUGUST 30, 2012 BY PAUL MIRENGOFF IN 2012 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, PAUL RYAN, REPUBLICAN CONVENTION
“YESTERDAY’S WIND,” AND TOMORROW’S
The great thing about Paul Ryan’s speech last night is that it worked at so many levels. As I tried to show in my initial post about the speech, it worked as an indictment of Obama administration policy, as deft support for Mitt Romney, and as traditional pulling of the heartstrings.
 
And it worked at an additional level that I neglected to note — a portryal of Barack Obama as a fad. Ryan made this point most memorably in this line:
 
College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life.
 
But he also made it poetically with this exquisite one, perhaps my favorite:
 
It all started off with stirring speeches, Greek columns, the thrill of something new. Now all that’s left is a presidency adrift, surviving on slogans that already seem tired, grasping at a moment that has already passed, like a ship trying to sail on yesterday’s wind.
 
Talk Radio News Service
Ryan On Obama: All That’s Left Is A Presidency Adrift, Sailing On Winds Of Yesterday
By Benny Martinez|8/29/2012 11:35 PM
Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan tore into President Obama’s fiscal history during his acceptance speech before the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida Wednesday evening.