Wave forcing of small floating bodies

We investigate the drift of small bodies (bodies which do not significantly disturb the fluid) in waves. We begin with the slope sliding models of Rumer and Marchenko, and we establish that the models are different and that the correct model is due to Marchenko. We then investigate the slope sliding model when we have linear wave forcing of constant frequency (for which the differences between the two models vanish). We establish that the drift velocity, for this case, is independent of initial position, which contradicts published results in which drift velocity was shown to depend on initial position. The reason for the error in previous results was the slow decay of the transient motion. For this reason we present a numerical method to calculate the drift velocity, which avoids the problems associated with the slow decay of the transient motion. Some results for the drift velocity are given.