Several Programs to Check Tides and Currents on Mobile

No matter where your home port is, if you spend enough time on the water, you will need to think about tides
and currents - and these considerations can be critical. They can save fuel costs
and time, but they can also impact safety when entering an ocean inlet or docking
in an unfamiliar port. Today there are many great options that allow you to enter
a location and receive the predictions electronically on your laptop or mobile phone.

cTide data for Cape Cod.

Karen & Jeffrey Siegel © 2008


Active Corporation

CTIDE AND NAVSTATION TIDES



cTide is a free, graphical tide prediction program for Windows Mobile. It is also
based on XTide and provides predictions for about 5,900 locations around the world.
Data can be displayed in a graphical form, and predictions are available on any
date between 1970 and 2038. We have found cTide to run slower than Tide Tool, but
the predictions are reliable and the display is comparable.



NavStation Tides is a Windows Mobile program that offers tide predictions for more
than 3,000 stations worldwide, using the UK Admiralty Simple Harmonic Method. Another
commercial application is Tide Plotter, which offers a wide variety of display formats
including plots, tabular and map-based. Tide Plotter sells for about $22, which
includes software versions for your Windows CE, Windows Mobile or Pocket PC mobile
phone, as well as your PC.



To access tide predictions on your Apple iPhone there is Tide App, a web-based tide
predictor. With Tide App you can obtain a five day tide prediction table starting
with the current date for a variety of locations in the U.S., the U.K., Germany
and parts of Canada.



To access tide and current predictions on a Blackberry or Symbian mobile phone you
will need to go to one of the many available websites. The NOAA website offers a
wealth of information including interactive maps, tide plots and text-based tide
charts, which you can configure in a variety of ways by selecting the units, time
zone and past and future date ranges.


WEB-BASED APPLICATIONS



There are a variety of web-based servers using XTide to serve tide predictions online.
One of the most used is a website from the University of South Carolina. The site
provides an almost overwhelming number of options for displaying tide and current
predictions.

NavStation Tides is a commercial Windows Mobile program that covers about 3,000 locations.

Others websites include Tidelines Online, which shows a simple 5-day tide plot.
Easy Tide offers free 7-day predictions worldwide. If you register on the site you
can store your favorite ports, enter notes and view additional notices. For a nominal
fee you can access sunrise/sunset data, lunar phases and other enhanced predictions.
Some weather sites also include tide predictions. For example, the Weather Channel
site offers tide predictions as part of its Marine Forecast.



The website SailFlow offers tidal information in a different style, showing the
tide direction and speed with arrows on a map. The arrows point in the direction
of the current with the arrow color indicating the strength. You can display an
animation of the predictions for the coming 24 hours.

SailFlow is a website that offers tides and current information graphically, with arrows and colors indicating direction and severity.

SUNRISE, SUNSET



Another bit of useful information that is included with each of the programs and
sites mentioned, with the exception of Tidelines Online, is sunrise/sunset and moonrise/moonset
times. The phase of the moon affects the height of the tide, so most tide predictors,
such as Tide Tool, cTide and SailFlow, display this information along with the tidal
data. The Weather Channel provides it under their "Marine Forecast" section.



Knowing when the sun will rise and set can be helpful for even a simple day trip
to ensure a safe, comfortable passage home.



To read the complete version of this article, visit Activecaptain.com.