Motion in my Ocean

Hello guys,

I'm attempting to create realistic boat motion on waves. I've got my water set up as documented here:

http://kostiantyn-dvornik.blogspot.com/2013/05/unity-worlds-coolest-tutorial-about.html

My first attempt was to read the height of a certain point by raycasting on the collider, getting the mesh filter, checking the distance of each vertice vs the hit point and reading the closest vertex's y value. This didn't work I believe because the rendered mesh isn't actually moving, just the shader makes it look that way? (please clarify if incorrect)

My second attempt was update the mesh collider, but it seems to be much too slow to be a considerable option.

My final attempt would be to query the shader for the vertex point somehow, sort of like how I did in method one.

Anybody have any tips on how I could get heights of rolling waves at certain points?

Thanks