If you were just going to go from one island to another, the wind direction wasn't an issue. If you wanted to explore though, it became tedious. The faster sailing though was the better improvement, the original boat speed was just so sloooooooow. However, if their claim that it couldn't have been faster because of system load times is true, I guess it's more forgivable than the wind direction thing.
However, they should have just given you the Swift Sail when you get the regular sail. They don't really make it obvious where the item is, and I may not have gotten it at all if I didn't know it was in the game and looked up where it was.