How do you get your tidal info?

FullCircle

FullCircle

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As I dont buy Reeds EVERY year (I have has this conv with Neville Featherstone), there is a need to get tidal information.

Skipper Stu has said on another post he buys Belfield. But why?

I use our boat yard printed one for local times.

I use WXTide 32 freeware for planning and carry a printout from the software on board for each of the days and destinations I am going to.

Also, I can use Admiralty EasyTide for 7 day predictions, but never buy their service (which I think should be free anyway).

I have tidal stream atlases too, but I have just moved to PC on board with C-Max cartography, so a new era dawns....

How do you get by?
 
FullCircle said:
As I dont buy Reeds EVERY year (I have has this conv with Neville Featherstone), there is a need to get tidal information.

Skipper Stu has said on another post he buys Belfield. But why?

I use our boat yard printed one for local times.

I use WXTide 32 freeware for planning and carry a printout from the software on board for each of the days and destinations I am going to.

Also, I can use Admiralty EasyTide for 7 day predictions, but never buy their service (which I think should be free anyway).

I have tidal stream atlases too, but I have just moved to PC on board with C-Max cartography, so a new era dawns....

How do you get by?
Click to expand...

Admiralty Tidal Atlas, local ( free ) tide chart, Plotter tide info
 
A cheapskate writes:-

If you only sail in the Channel then a cheap way to do it is to buy the Reeve - Fowkes Atlas for the area you're likely to sail in, take it apart and laminate the pages, and download a free Cherbourg tide-table from the publisher.
 
Easytide for the 7 day prediction.

www.pol.ac.uk for 30 day prediction and Dover tide tables for long-term planning (i.e. is a trip to x & back viable on a particular weekend in a few months time).

And that's despite usually buying Reeds or the CA Almanac. Half the time I use one of the almanacs it is just so I don't get rusty with secondary port calculations.
 
Our Club handbook has tides for the season only, I leave a copy of Laver's Liverpool tables on board & use my G£ enabled phone to access the BBC weather site to get info for next 5 days anywhere I am. The Lavers booklet costs about 30 bob but everything else is free to use.
 
Use a mixture of sources

Local tide tables for £1

WXTide 32 freeware and download off Port of London website.

Usually end up with copy on boat in laminated sleeves, plus copies in car, office & at home.

I would have thought a man of FCs calibre would just look at the moon and work it from there.:rolleyes:
 
I have Neptune Tides program on the laptop and can print out a day or a months times as needed. It has a lot of secondary ports included too which is helpful. On my old laptop and an old desktop I still have the UKHO Tidecalc program as well.

Other than that I buy or get free from the chandlers the local tide tables for Poole which also has Dover tides included.

If I buy an almanac I buy the Votre Livre De Bord one which covers pretty well from Dover Straights to Gibralter, both sides of the English Channel and with lots of other useful info including charts and harbour pilots much of it translated into English as well. Much better and cheaper than Reeds but of course doesn't work outside of the area mentioned.
 
Admiralty EasyTide on Blackberry when on the move or just need a quick check on the week ahead. Wiley Almanac for long range planning (long weekends months ahead etc) and the middle pages of the Chichester Harbour booklet "free" with harbour dues.

TBH in the summer I get into such a rythym (and spend so much time on the water
) that I can pretty much work it out for any given day with a fair degree of accuracy.
 
I'm a Belfield fan too. All the ports you could need plus some buoys, tidal streams, elementary route planner. Easy to use, three years at a time not very expensive. Print of 4 months on a sheet of A4 to keep on the boat plus secondary ports for a trip.

The marina send out Harwich tables with the bill but I'm not in Harwich.
 
I use Belfield as well,and also have the passage planning add on for going foreign.If you buy several copies it is cheaper so several of us club together.I also get the Harwich tables from the Marina as well as the nice coloured fold out one from Harwich Authority.I mostly know the differences on Harwich/W on Naze now.Years ago I bought Pete Widders Tidal Slate which has little dials to turn which give accurate adjustments on high or low water WoN for the East Coast for tide time and depth.He did them for various parts of the country.Probably a collectors item by now.
 
reginaldon said:
I just wonder how the Thames Sailing Barge skippers managed, especially when their multi- faced plotters went down.
Click to expand...

I the "Good old Days", charts used to show the HW, F&C for most ports. That is the time of High Water at the Full, and New Moon. Navigators would know the state of the moon, and could work out the time of the tide by interpolation. Nowadays, that is thought to be too simple, and we are led to believe that we need to know the precise time of the tide to the nearest second.

To get free tide tables for anywhere in the world for as long into the future as you could possibly want, go to www.fiica.uniud.it.8080/zones
 
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