I made a nurbs plane and used about 3 animated wave deformers with different amplitudes and wavelengths. I tried making it into a softbody then and adjusting the weifghts to get some small randomized swirls and such, but for some reason what I see during playback and single frame renders are different from what comes out during a batch render. I found a script that should help with that, but it's the crashing of waves and spray emission I'd like to do.

If I take the fluid effects route, do you know a place I can find tutorials on that?