Wave-making resistance
Wave-making resistance is a form of drag that affects surface watercraft, such as boats and ships, and reflects the energy required to push the water out of the way of the hull. This energy goes into creating the wave. Physics For small displacement hulls, such as sailboats or rowboats, wave-making resistance is the major source of the marine vessel drag. A salient property of water waves is dispersiveness; i.e., the greater the wavelength, the faster it moves. Waves generated by a ship are affected by her geometry and speed, and most of the energy given by the ship for making waves is transferred to water through the bow and stern parts. Simply speaking, these two wave systems, i.e., bow and stern waves, interact with each other, and the resulting waves are responsible for the resistance. If the resulting wave is large, it carries much energy away from the ship, delivering it to the shore or wherever else the wave ends up or just dissipating it in the water, and that energy must be supplied by the ship's propulsion (or momentum), so that the ship experiences it as drag. Conversely, if the resulting wave is small, the drag experienced is small.