Ahh, but that spike was Zeus's own aluminum tent pole which being diamagnetic causes the magnetic poles to flip flop, over and over again. Our compasses no longer work and all are lost at sea so an ocean with no waves will not be navigable and you have solved the OPs problem. Good work matwoolf.
You could still have a moon and have calm seas. The further away the moon is, the calmer the seas. Wind plays a small factor in tides, but even with regular winds, the oceans would seem calm. It is mostly determined by the gravitational pull a planets moon has. The less pull, the calmer the oceans will be.
The moon and sun cause the tides. Spring tides (greatest range) occur when the Sun and Moon are aligned with Earth. Neap tides (lowest range) occur when the Sun and Moon are at right angles to the earth. A low barometric pressure can cause a storm surge, which makes a high tide higher than normal. Conversely a high barometric pressure can reduce the height of a high tide. There are places where the incoming and outgoing tides cause rough water in the shape of overfalls, tidal races, standing waves and eddies. They are not fun to sail through! They're the sort of places where tidal turbines are being installed. Wind causes waves. Always. No exception.
Well at least one exception with Tsunami or tidal waves which maybe where some of the confusion is coming from. And of course there is the Tidal Bore in Canada, now called the total bore since it is was more of a ripple than a wave when I saw it. Overall wind generates all the significant waves we commonly think about. Oh in the case of Scotland, I also think Nessie swimming fast at the surface creates a bow wave that always rocks the boat making the photographs come out blurry. For the OPs question another consideration would be a very shallow ocean, waves need twice the subsurface depth as their height, again with the significant exception of a Tsunami when it finally reaches the shallows and shore. And now that I write that maybe even a Tsunami requires depth to support the energy hidden within the wave. This thread certainly has its ups and downs.
Deeper oceans. Water is slightly compressible, waves only get really big when they come in the shallows. In the deep ocean, a tsunami is nothing more than a shockwave. A total water world (no land) would likely have little to no waves other than those driven by storms.
@petey0707 If there is wind, there are waves. If the planet is rotating too quickly, then the surface drags against the atmosphere, and the friction creates strong wind If the planet is rotating too slowly, then the day side gets orders of magnitude hotter than the night side, and the temperature difference creates strong wind If the planet is hot enough, then hurricanes would create strong waves If the planet is cold enough and the water salty enough, then the ice caps would make the cold saltwater sink to the bottom of the ocean, pulling warmer water from nearby on the surface If there are fault lines in the planet's crust under or near the water, then earthquakes and volcanic eruptions would create shockwaves which would then convert to liquid waves upon contact If asteroids are able to either hit the water or to explode very close to it, then the impact/explosion will create shockwaves (see fault lines) You're looking for a cold world with no moon, a thick atmosphere to stop asteroids, little to no dissolved minerals in the water, little to no tectonic activity, and you're looking for a very specific sweet spot of daily rotation that I'm not sure anybody has needed to calculate before (though in your favor, "never needed to" has never stopped scientists before ) TLDR: I would focus on chemical changes to the water itself, rather than physical changes to the waves that form.
Higher gravity would also help dissipate the energy of the waves. You have to think of this in terms of thermodynamics. When energy gradients exist, how are they resolved? Most planets in the universe will not look like Earth, we have a weird amount of water. Most planets will either be bone dry or covering in hundreds of miles of water.
Given that the Op hasnt been back since the day he posted the question i suspect we are wasting our time
Sorry that was in reply to a post further up asking him for more info - I cocked up the quote, I meant wasting our time expecting him to answer any questions, I'd agree no day is wasted in terms of more interesting info to digest
