More useless info. When a boat wake hits a natural shoreline, the natural shoreline absorbs the wake. When it hits a seawall, the wave ricochets back almost at the same size.

The wave is moving, not the water, as Doc H said.

quote:

Originally posted by Sunset_Va:
To the OP.
Some interesting reading here ;
http://www.seafriends.org.nz/oceano/waves.htm

I offer you no levity, there was once a wave that embraced me at Nags Head from the Canary Islands!

Pretty good summary - covers basics of a semester long class I took a long time ago ("waves and tides").

Why not? That's why we're sampling miniscule waves of energy from stars way far away.

Wakes left by large cargo ships can last many hours, and extend extreme distance, I recall a pic that showed wakes that were several hours old.

quote:

Originally posted by braillediver:
Why not? That's why we're sampling miniscule waves of energy from stars way far away.

But those are EM waves, not physical waves.

quote:

Originally posted by Surefire:
Wakes left by large cargo ships can last many hours, and extend extreme distance, I recall a pic that showed wakes that were several hours old.

Had to enter the disturbed water from the wake of an upstream barge on the Missouri river at night in a canoe last month. The water was disturbed radically all the way across the river for some time behind the barge. Tossed about by maybe 3 foot swells for hundreds of yards behind it.

I will never forget one wave , in particular,
It was my 4th time out on the ocean , out of San Pedro.

On a 26 foot cabo cuddy cruiser.

there were two other that wanted to start rigging their rods.

We were going 24 miles out to some oil rigs.

Mark told me to take the wheel and keep it on the mark of the compass.

I scanned left and right for other boats, and then on the horizon there was a speck, going from right to left.

12 minutes later it was closer and in front of us.

14 minutes later it was at our 10:00.

It was shortly after that I saw a huge dip in the water surface and a huge wave behind it.

I told the fellas to grab something to hold on to and cut the power by half.

It was the king of all oil tankers , that had passed, W O M P ! went the tiny craft as it landed flat bottom on the ocean surface .


Just then I realized that we were 14 miles from the beach with nothing but life jackets .


we each landed three yellow tail that day and
it was worth the 4 1/2 hours of being sea sick