There are many references around that discuss "eddy viscosity" and its effect on skin-friction, wave generation, and wave decay. A Google search for "eddy viscosity skin friction" brings up thousands of hits.
My source of bewilderment stems from a commonly seen statement that:
"molecular viscosity is a property of water, whereas eddy viscosity is a property of the flow".
That seems quite clear and fair to me. I can appreciate that the eddy viscosity concept is sometimes useful (because of our ignorance of turbulence) and sometimes strained. Whether it is useful for determining an effective Reynolds number is not clear to me.
Eddy viscosity can vary by about six orders of magnitude in the ocean, so it could be very important for some calculations such as wave decay, and immaterial or inappropriate for others, such as skin-friction or ship-wave generation.
Maybe I should just stick to inviscid theoretical calculations and leave the hard stuff to others