wakes

[AdamLein]

My experience with wakes seems to be a bit different from yours, but I think that may be the result of the waters I sail in. We get lots of massive freighters and ferries coming through our area (southern Strait of Georgia) as well as smaller cruisers and the occasional fishing boats. By far I'd say the cruisers are the biggest producers of wakes, but I get the feeling that's because we get a lot closer to them than we typically get to the ferries and freighters. They pass by with greater regularity than the cruisers but I almost never see a wake from them... now they pass several miles away, however.

On the other hand, when cruisers zip by at whatever unnatural speeds they like to go, we always braces for a wild ride... but that goes away much more quickly than you describe. We usually see two crests (from the powerboat's bow and stern), and then it's over. If we're moving along at a good clip we can usually push through it without too much loss in speed, but if it's a calm day it will shake our brains out and stop us dead. Annoying, but over quickly.

I hear what you're saying about aerial photographs of wakes, but I think that's just disturbed water behind the other boat, not wave crests. Or, sometimes the waves aren't continuous but are broken up into pieces like a dashed line where the dashes slightly overlap, but still only waves on the boundary of the big triangular area.

I wonder if the difference has to do with the topography. How open is "open water"? Could it be that their wakes are bouncing off the shore or underwater slopes? Things can get choppier in the shallows within a few hundred feet of the shore, but beyond that the nearest earth is 12-15 nm away in every direction except NW, and then it's really far.

[Boasun]

Here in the southland, cajuns have a tendency to shoot at offending boats.
So if a couple of bullet hole pop into your cabin, you know that you pissed off someone who has taken a sudden dislike to you. You may have parted their mooring lines, slammed their boat against the pier or another boat or both. And they are cousins to the local law so you now have another problem on your hands....
Wouldn't it have been easier to just slow down and eliminate your wake?

By the way you should slow down about a three quarters of a mile before you pass any moorages. Because you are dragging your wake for quite a distance after you slow down. Waiting until the last minute won't work here because of that drag.

[foxglove]

Larry and Susan's "slider" technique has been mentioned before. Several years ago, delivery skipper Jon Eisberg wrote an ICW piece for Cruising World in which he commented that you can minimize the effect of a large wake by "turning away from it and throwing a hip check with your boat's quarter". (Sept 2004)

I don't object to being tossed a wake. I can turn into it or away from it. My point was that in open waters, large boats should consider slowing and passing closer abeam as they would in a channel instead of passing at full speed a hundred yards away. That's when we get the roll that lasts so long. Seaworthy is wrong to convince large powercraft that passing at a wide berth causes no harm because "The wake flattens out over distance." It does flatten out but not a a hundred yards as most skippers seem to think.

I was hoping a few sailors who agree with me would write or e-mail Seaworthy to tell them to be more specific about how wide a pass is sufficient to avoid excessive roll and possible damage to the slower boats they pass and that their expert should look at a few aerial photos before he calls himself an expert.

[commanderpete]

If you're interested, there has been quite a bit of scientific study on the nature of boat wakes, starting with Lord Kelvin's ship wave theory in 1887.

Much too complicated for me....lots of variables