Over a month ago (holy shit!), I said I wouldn’t blog until I rectified the problem with my inaccurate predictions for the waves forming off the stern of a ship.

At first, I thought it was a mistake with my paper-and-pencil work. Did I screw up a calculation? Was a ‘1′ supposed to be a ‘2′ somewhere? Did I accidentally forget a negative sign? Was it buried on the third page? The thirty-seventh page? Or was the issue more fundamental than that?

Quickly, I moved on to another possibility: perhaps the mistake (or one of the mistakes) could be with the actual numerical simulations. After all, it was way back in 1977 that someone came up with the first working algorithm to calculate such waves. but oddly enough, nobody else has published a confirmation in the last 30 years.

Had I re-coded the program incorrectly? Or was the original study off?

On Tuesday, I traveled to London to spend a day with one of the world’s leading experts on free-surface flows, to see if he could figure it out.

How much of a go-getter am I?

(’He’, by the way, is the same fella that published the original 1977 study. Back then, he was in Australia. Thank god he’s now at UCL — I don’t think I would have had the heart to fly to the land down under.)

Anyways, we spent hours hemming and hawing over my questions.

Answers? What answers. I got nothin’.

It was a bust.

So where where do we stand, now?

I think — No…I’m sure the problem lies with where the water comes up and touches the side of the ship.

Stern

At this point, we expect the change in the fluid velocity to be infinite, with the water going from a finite speed to zero in the blink of an eye. But obviously, ‘infinity’ is difficult to program…

I’m certain that our cavalier handling of the water near this stagnation point is causing small errors to propagate downstream. Visually, all the waves look similar, but once you start calculating them precisely, these small errors can make all the difference.

Will this be the final piece of the puzzle? Once I rectify the numerics, will this be my One Big Find? Will I, content at last, retire to the Bahamas with a sexy brunette who thinks I’m the greatest thing since strawberry pop-tarts?

I dunno.

What I do know is that if I don’t crack this problem soon, I’m gonna go nutso. I’m tired and I just want answers.