Animating soft bodies

Hi all,

I need some help from the Blender experts. I’ve been trying to animate a ship moving through the water with no luck at all, I’ve set up soft body physics to control the way the ship “rides” the ocean swells, and that works pretty well, the problem is that I can’t get it to move forward, or any other direction for that matter, it just slowly bobs up and down but won’t move.

My question is how to give this thing some forward movement? I’ve tried keyframing, bones, wind, force, changing gravity along the Y axis, parenting to an empty - I’ve tried pretty much everything. Is there anything else to try? Without losing the physically “correct” movement on the ocean?

TIA
fitz