Low Tide/ High Tide

Want to play the low tide/ high tide game? It’s easy—simply look at the photos below, and guess which one is high tide and which one is low tide.

This is our view from Halcyon, looking back towards Mike’s cabin. The amount of water that moves in and out – twice a day, every day, always – regularly captivates me. Here, we regularly have 15-18 foot tides. This means that in about 6 hours, 15-18 vertical feet of water floods in from the ocean and slams into every bay, inlet, stream, and harbour in the area, just in time to, over the next 6 hours, get dragged right back out. In many areas on the coast of the Pacific Northwest, the tide tries to force too much water through too small a passage. The current in these passages can run 15 or 20 mph, which can create fierce rapids and whirlpools, a dangerous situation for a big heavy sailboat clicking along at 7 mph. It is crucial to hit these passages at ‘slack’ tide, when the water has reached either high or low tide and is preparing to turn around.

I realize that for most people, the tide has no bearing on their every day life. In fact, tides probably don’t cross the minds of most people in the course of the day.

That is not the case for us.

Tides affect us every day, in almost everything we do. For example,

We park our dinghy on the beach for a picnic, or to collect firewood, or to look for clams. If the tide is ebbing (dropping), our dinghy will get beached and we will have to drag and lug and tug it back into the water.

If the tide is flooding (rising), we may quickly run out of beach!

We go for a sail on Halcyon.

If the tide is against us, we will go slower, and try to blame all the barnacles on the rudder

If the tide is with us, we will go faster, and chalk it up to being such great sailors

We go to town in the motorboat.

If the tide is going the opposite way as the wind, the water will be very choppy, making the ride much less comfortable

If the tide is going the same way as the wind, the waves will be smaller, and we probably won’t even make note of the windspeed

We travel to Mike’s cabin off the Unuk river

If the tide is high, we can go

If the tide is low (or really, anything but high), we can’t go, because the river, without a high tide pushing the water back, is too shallow to negotiate in a boat)

We reference tide charts like others reference a watch, 

and we always know if it is coming or going.