[smackdaddy]

Okay - I just had a conversation with my genius physicist nephew over the holidays (the one that gives talks in Copenhagen and stuff) - and, as much as I'm writhing on the ground as I write this, I think maybe Dog is kinda, sorta "right" about the JSD....at least in principal.

My biggest concern with the concept was rudder damage due to water (either in the wave itself, or breaking at the top of the wave) moving past the rudder creating a reverse force on it and breaking stuff. This obviously would not be an issue if the boat was bow-on. So I just wasn't quite sure about it.

However, my smarty-pants-physicist-nephew corrected my thinking that waves in water are actually "moving forward" as they appear to be. Though he rightly said the full details were way beyond my severely limited mind, he explained that the standard non-breaking wave is simply an up/down movement of the water - not the forward motion that it appears to be. And that forward "surfing" motion of the boat is due to its sliding down the face of the wave - it's not really being "pushed" because this type of wave has no velocity, just amplitude. (I think that's all right).

SO, in this instance, the JSD is golden.

He went on to say that breaking waves were a completely different set of equations that got very complicated very quick. That water IS moving and has a lot of "forward force". But, as someone said earlier in this debate, as long as the rudder stays in that lower "strata" of water, it's fine.

There may be other Fluid-Dynamics-Gurus on here that can shed more light on these DiffEqs - but that's what I understood him to say right before I fell asleep in my bowl of Cheetohs.

So - now this only leaves the issues of the breaking waves pooping the JSD'd boat, or the boat tilting up high enough on the wave face to expose the rudder to breaking water.

This is really pretty fun to think about. Oh look...cheetohs.