The winds were required to physically create the conditions that moved the vessels toward the New World. They had no sails, so the wind-driven currents were the medium of force that moved them across the ocean.
Symbolic: The voyage was certainly physical, but carries with it symbolic connotations:
“Endowed with divine power, the brother of Jared was prepared to lead his people across the seas. They made their temporal affairs ready and “set forth into the sea.” The “Lord God caused that there should be a furious wind blow upon the face of the waters, towards the promised land” and “the wind did never cease to blow towards the promised land while they were upon the waters” (Ether 6:4-5, 8). Hugh Nibley has chronicled many “ancient” accounts of tremendous winds during the fall of Babel (Lehi 177-78). In the ancient world, wind was often seen as Jehovah’s “instrument in overcoming chaos (Gen. 1:2; 8:1), and in transporting a prophet (1 Kings 18:12; 2 Kings 2:16; cf. 2:11; Ezek. 8:3; 11:1)” (Scott 4:848).
Anciently, water was often symbolic of the primordial chaos, “when darkness was upon the face of the deep” (Gen. 1:2; Eliade, The Myth 59-60). The act of creation or organization occurred when “the Spirit of God moved upon the deep,” and order and life came upon the chaos (Gen. 1:2). To pass through the waters symbolized death and renewal. The ordinance of baptism partially draws upon this symbolism. To baptize is to bury the natural man in the dissolutive primordial waters, and then to raise up, by God’s Spirit, a new creature. As Paul puts it, “Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead” (Col. 2:12; see also Rom. 6:4).
In much the same symbolic fashion, to cross the waters or seas is to leave the old decadent world behind to receive the new pristine and promised land. In ancient lore, crossing the great waters evoked images of traveling through time or life and traversing from old to new worlds. Friedrich Weinreb points out that, “The passage through this world is very much like passing through water, hence … a passage through time. And lest we should be drowned in water and in time, God gave us the ’teba,‘ the ’word,’ [Ark] which carries us like a ship through the water” (Weinreb 248). Just as the “Flood figures both the descent into the watery depths and baptism,” so too would the Jaredite journey into the seas (Eliade, The Sacred 134). After all, the Jaredites were “buried in the depths of the sea” but “there was no water that could hurt them, their vessels being tight like unto a dish, and also they were tight like unto the ark of Noah” (Ether 6:6-7). Like Noah, these Jaredites left the old behind, pressing forward to a new land of promise. These historical stories may also typify the fact that “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17).” (Thomas R. Valetta. “Jared and His Brother.” Monte S. Nyman and Charles D. Tate, Jr., eds., Fourth Nephi through Moroni: From Zion to Destruction [Provo: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1995], 317-8.)