Tides

[Tengu]

Well, these days I have a Sea View but I still dont understand tides.

I have the Tide Times booklet, as retailed at pretty much every shop in the county...no info on neap and spring tides.

I need to know about the extra lows and when they occur so I can go Razor clam hunting.

 

[dewi]

When we went camping on the coast this year, we loaded up the My Tide Times app on our phones and it correctly predicted the tide times throughout the holiday. Not sure whether it records the extra lows... but worth a look anyway.

 

[boatman]

Heights of tides given in tide tables. Listen to Radio Cornwall.

 

[Drain Bamaged]

it should give the height of each tide both high and low (generally in metres) in your tide book. Most weather sites or the National River Authority site should also give you the tide times and levels too.

D.B.

 

[boatman]

http://www.ntslf.org/tides/hilo
Newlyn, years 2008 to 2026

 

[KenThis]

As I understand it lowest water will be at low tide during spring tides, and spring tides happen when the moon is either full or new.

http://www.visitmyharbour.com/articles/3154/spring-and-neap-tides-explanations-and-example

Don't really know if it's true but it kind of made sense so I believe it.

 

[andibs]

You can get Reeds Small Boat almanac for about £15. That will give you tide times, if they are springs, neaps or mid range, the range of rise and fall and direction of current hour by hour. Covers all UK

Andy

 

[Madriverrob]

I live in Whitby and use a phone app and tide tables , they compare quite well .
Tides also published daily in the harbour and on the beach at designated points and at lifeguard points .....

 

[peaks]

This might help - seems to give the info you are looking for....http://www.tidetimes.co.uk/

 

[Uilleachan]

The BBC do a good visual tide table, this page is set to scotland so select your own area from the top left of the page and then click on the place closest to you for a visual reference.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/coast_and_sea/tide_tables/7

We're in neaps at the moment springs arriving next week. Lowest lows are in March and generally the only tides low enough for picking scallops off the foreshore, razors are getable more often depending on the spot and competition, but you still need a low low to get access, and a lot of stealth to get at them.

 

[awarner]

Being on the Hamble you get used to the double high tides due to the Isle of Wight, where the first tide comes in from the Needles end of the island and a few hours later from the other end so you get a high then fairly dead water for two hours with a slight dip followed by a second high. The problem is when the tide turns, it's like water down a plug hole and catches a lot of people out. Had one woman come up the river and into the local pub for a meal with her kids, leave and then storm back into the pub demanding where the water has gone.....

As mentioned above a spring tide will give you the highest high and the lowest low tides. A neap tide has very little movement so you get the reverse of a high with the high tide being low in height compared to a spring, and the low is higher than a spring low. The difference between the spring and neap can be quite considerate.

Also remember the different spring tides occur throughout the year which can also vary.
Add to that make sure you use the tide time and heights as local to your area as possible as there can be quite a difference and you may get caught out.

 

[Tengu]

My tides book does give the heights.

The lowest are not on the new moon, but a few days after??

 

[wicca]

" The lowest are not on the new moon, but a few days after??"

That's correct Tengu. The easy ( if simplistic) way to explain that is although the height of a Spring tide is a result of the gravitational pull of Moon and Sun (Springs) there is also the rotation of the Earth to take into consideration which effects the massive movement of water on the Earth's surface. Imagine slowly swirling a big bowl of water around in your hands. After a few rotations you would see a sort of 'Tidal wave' running round the bowl. The Sun and Moon may be aligned and pulling together, but the spin of the Earth means the highest water takes a while (approx couple of days) to arrive.

Tides can be quite a complex subject so I'll shut up in a minute but one thing that you should be aware of for your own safety. Those published Tide Tables are..predictions..not gospel. To explain..
If a tide is shown in the table say as (example) 10 metres depth at high water in your area, but a weather depression with deep low pressure maybe 930mbs sweeps through, the tide height could be, in some areas up to a metre higher. (air pressure letting the water rise higher) Of course the same applies to high pressure, so your 'high' tide is not as high as predicted.

I can sometimes sail my boat with her 5 foot deep keel, back onto her river mooring up to 45 minutes later when the weather is poor (low pressure) than I can when Mr sunshine is beaming..
So, if you intend paddling about on the tides edge hunting Razors or whatever, just keep in mind that a rainy low pressure day...could..mean you'll have deeper water than you thought to wade through safely back to dry land. That's considering extremes mind you, usually an average weather low only alters things by a few centimetres.
Happy digging..

 

[Tengu]

Ah, of course, at the New moon the moon is in line with the sun, (so we only see total excilpses in the new moon...) so they pull together?

Im just a Classical scholar, -we dont do tides. (We have some huge boats thogh.)

 

[wicca]

It's not really possible to make hard and fast statements about tides, I've learned over the years. Local conditions and prevailing wind/weather change the whole scenario sometimes. In some places the tides run at a fearsome pace, Morecambe Bay can be a dangerous place, it's easy to walk far out over the sands at low water and not be able to outrun the tide when the flood begins.
Double tides in the Solent as already explained..Thirty feet plus rise and fall around the Channel Islands!! I've rounded Portland Bill with just a little scrap of sail up, bound for Falmouth on a big Spring ebb with an Easterly wind, and the boat was doing over 9 knots with just the run of the tide under her..

 

[Gddd]

Almanac, such as Reeds have a page with tidal coefficientsfor each day. These show clearly when the highest and lowest tides occur. Not found them online anywhere though.

 

[mrcharly]

wicca has given a pretty thorough description. Tides are fascinating, a sailor's friend and enemy. Have you ever sailed in the Humber, Wicca? The tidal currents are so strong, they survey constantly and republish charts of the channels and sandbanks fortnightly.

 

[wicca]

" Have you ever sailed in the Humber, Wicca? "

Yes mrcharly I have. Back in 1963-64 for about 7 months, I was AB in one of the United Baltic Corporation Company's small reefer ships, the Baltic Sun, she was about 3,500 tons. We traded between Poland and the Timber Dock up at Hull with palletised cut wood (for the furniture industry I believe)
Years later about 2005, I sailed my own boat up to the Humber to see my late brother who lived in Grimsby. Even then I remembered the Humber tides being so ferocious (especially the Spring ebbs.. ) and wrote to the Humber Cruising Association, a local sailing club, who very kindly sent me the latest updates on the river.
I remember laying at anchor in my own boat way over at Spurn Head, just waiting for the tide to go up river to the lock gates and into Number One Fish Dock at Grimsby, as then they were improving their small Yacht Marina, where once the big deep sea trawlers had berthed.

 

[mrcharly]

The Grimsby yacht marina is very good, excellent facilities and skills available nearby.
I've brought a couple of small barges up the humber to york, the last one being a 20m dutch sailing barge. No echosounding gear, so we worked up the channels using a pole to take soundings while under sail. Exciting stuff while making better than 11knots over ground (sail and tide combined).

I had to look up 'reefer ship'. It initially brought to mind something of a rastafarian nature.

 

[Drain Bamaged]

Grimsby Marina has altered a bit over the years:-

Muck, slime, mud. We waded
for five mired weeks, reeking,
silt-fouled bilge-boards souring
in Grimsby bay.

from a poem by Rognvald Kale Kolsson (also known as St. Ronald or St. Ronald of Orkney) (c. 1103 - 1158)

D.B.