Us high-performance dinghy sailors, back in the day (Fireball, 505, et al) routinely wet-sanded their hulls to about 400--trying to get a boundary layer effect. Mind you, vertical 180s are slow, no matter what the hull finish, and avoiding such mishaps generally took up more of our time than than worrying about imitating a porpoise, or whatever. Dennis Conner did something like that with a special coating in one of the America's Cup races. Be interesting to see what Larry E. and the boys are doing with those big cats.

--S