dh@. wrote in message
...
Hi,

I have a houseboat on a lake. The waves come in from
the side and cause a lot of rocking around. When a boat
causes waves, it only causes so many and then they are
gone. Sometimes they're followed by waves from another
boat though most of the time that's not a big part of it, but
it sure seems that the boats keep on bouncing around in
the slips long after the waves have past. It doesn't look
like the water is still bouncing around too...just the boats.
So is most of the bouncing caused by the ropes, and the
boats bouncing around between and because of them?

No, that's not it at all. In a marina you get waves bouncing off various
other boats, structures, seawalls etc. Waves on a beach become
dissipated but waves in a basin with vertical walls just bounce and
bounce and bounce until, over a period of time, they get smaller and
smaller. But they stay large enough to rock boats around for quite some
time. You should never keep your lines so tight that you bounce back and
forth between the lines. Your lines should have pronounced cantenary in
them.

Wilbur Hubbard