You move your boat closer to shore and a speed boat passes you.?

Question

The waves are 3.0m apart. What is the wave speed?

Answer 1

The equation to get the speed is from the following;

c^2=gL/(2*pi) * tanh(2*pi*h/L)

All units are in SI

c= speed of waves

L=wave length

g=accel of gravity

h= heigth of wave

From the second source, the speed of the water in 1 ft depth is half the speed in 1000 ft.

If the ocean is deep, c can be found from the approximation;

c=1.25(l)^0.5

c=1.25(3)^0.5  = 2.17 m/s

half that would be c=1.08 m/s

I would like to show you better calculations but I simply need to know the depth of the water, or the heigth of the wave.

If some one does a better job than this let me know.