John Winters wrote: [the following is an excerpt taken from a previous discussion re: stability; I ask Winters' indulgence in pulling it out of context] > Maintaining equilibrium speed generally requires using a fair amount of > energy and one has to paddle pretty hard to surf non breaking waves. If you > do not paddle you cannot surf non breaking waves. [snip] > You may have noticed how short surfing lasts in deep water waves. Because > waves come in different sizes moving at different speeds the large surfable > waves resulting from the merging of two or more waves disappear as the > faster wave moves past and the wave size diminishes right out from under > you. That's true enough. However, there is a more fundamental reason one can not surf a deep water wave indefinitely: the leading wave of a packet of deep water waves (aka a "wave train") will eventually feed its energy into the wave following it. The net effect of this is that the packet of energy travelling as a group of deep water waves travels at a speed smaller than the speed of an individual wave. Check out pages 70-73 of the 1980 version of Willard Bascom's "Waves and Beaches" for a more complete discussion. This means that somebody on a surf ski working his/her butt off paddling to maintain a surfing position on a wave in the middle of a wave train will eventually be riding on the leading wave of the train ... which will soon diminish, leaving the paddler to seek out another large crest to ride. I think I have noticed this effect trying to maintain a surfing position on small stuff, too, but can't be sure of it. Anybody else experienced that? -- Dave Kruger Astoria, OR incompetent surfer *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced/forwarded outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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