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> Wake can mean two things. I think you're confusing disturbance of the water that it passed through with travelling waves that appear as ripples on the water surface in the case of boats.

In what sense are these different things? How could you have one without the other?

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They're distinctly different physical phenomena. Surface waves are like spring-mass systems where gravity acts as the spring (hence they're also called gravity waves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_wave). They can't exist in a homogenous medium, like underwater approximately is. Since they're travelling waves, they carry energy when they travel away from the boat, so it's a source of energy loss.

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