As I recall, wave shape, frequency and height is determined by the 3 main
factors of wind speed, fetch (distance of open water) and water depth. If
you have a shallow body of water with only a modest wind speed of 15 mph
over large fetch, such as the Chesapeake Bay, this will result in a constant
chop of waves very close together in frequency. Conversely, the same wind
speed over a smaller fetch, such as a deep inland lake, will produce smaller
waves that are shaped quite differently. The waves you mentioned are
produced by a boat rather than the wind, but I wonder if the same principles
apply here as well. Perhaps the water depth where you witness this wave
action was very deep and had an effect upon the wave shape.


wrote in message
...
Hi,

I have a boat on Lake Lanier in GA. The other morning I took it out,
and the overall wave action appeared to be different than usual.
It was a flat calm day, except when a passing boat produced some
waves. Most of the time the waves seem to be sort of peaked and
a bit sharp, but on this morning they were more rounded and flatter.
The first boat I noticed it from, I thought it might be simply due to
the shape of the boat itself. But after a while I noticed it was true of
all of them...which was cool with me because it meant I could go
faster without getting tossed in the air too much. It still made me
wonder *why* though. Could it have something to do with what
creates high and low tides, and/or why sometimes when you dig
a hole you seem to have more dirt than you took out and sometimes
you seem to have less? If so, is there a way to predict when waves
will tend to be sharper and when they will tend to be flatter, like
people can predict high and low tides?