This paper focuses on investigating the impact of waves on ship hydrodynamic performance, enhancing our understanding of seakeeping characteristics and contributing to advanced ship and propeller design. It examines the resistance, motions, and nominal wake of the KVLCC2 bare hull, which is free to surge, heave, and pitch, in both calm water and regular head waves using a RANS approach. The research reveals a substantial dependency of the wake on grid resolution, particularly in calm water and shorter waves, while motions and resistance display a weaker dependency. The computed nominal wake is compared against towing tank SPIV measurements. Utilizing Fourier analyses and reconstructed time series, the study examines correlations among various factors influencing the bare hull’s performance in waves. The axial velocity component of the wake in waves demonstrates significant time variations, mainly driven by higher harmonic amplitudes. This dynamic wake is influenced by instantaneous propeller disk velocities due to hull motions, orbital wave velocities, boundary layer contraction/expansion, bilge vortex and shaft vortex dynamics. The wake distribution at the propeller plane not only differs significantly from the calm water wake in longer waves but also exhibits notably larger time-averaged values (up to 21%).