When traditional linearized theory is used to study gravity-capillary waves produced by flow past an obstruction, the geometry of the object is assumed to be small in one or several of its dimensions. In order to preserve the nonlinear nature of the obstruction, asymptotic expansions in the low-Froude-number or low-Bond-number limits can be derived, but here, the solutions invariably predict a waveless surface at every order. This is because the waves are in fact, exponentially small, and thu...