Re: How long can a ship wake be?

Hi Rebecca,

As far as I know there are no set rules for the length of a ship's wake. As you pointed out, the waves (or wake) created by a ship depends on a number of factors, how fast the ship is travelling, the size of the ship, and the depth of the water ('Waves in Fluids' by James Lighthill has a nice section describing the mathematics of this).

The persistence of the wake is harder to predict. Once the ship is some distance away, wakes are generally made visible by foam left behind. The persistence of the foam has a great deal to do with whether there's something in the water to stabilize the bubbles, i.e. to the chemical and biological properties of the water, which vary greatly from place to place.

Cheers,

Tetjana