Saturday neaps

[Diver0001]

I'm going stir crazy. It's neap tide on a Saturday with two slacks both at times of the day that come out perfectly for our planning. We've waited months for this......

And there's a bloody force 8 storm.

I think I'll just go bang my head against a wall for a while.

But while I"m at it I'll start this thread.

It's been a couple of years since anyone asked about spring/neap tides so I thought I"d start a thread about it.

To summarize

Spring tides occur during or shortly after full and new moons and result in higher high tides and lower low tides (read stronger tidal currents). Neap tides occur during or shortly after 1/2 moons and result in the lowest tides of the month. Good to know if you dive in the ocean.

Also interesting aobut spring and neap tides is that thay don't always fall on teh same days as the corresponding lunar event. In some places it happens later. Anyone want to venture a guess as to why this is? (hint, do a search on "age of the tide" or "parallax inequality") for some interesting reading.

R..

 

[turnerjd]

Spring tides occur during or shortly after full and new moons and result in higher high tides and lower low tides (read stronger tidal currents). Neap tides occur during or shortly after 1/2 moons and result in the lowest tides of the month. Good to know if you dive in the ocean.
R..

And I thought that I was one of the few people to keep an eye on the dates, and the little pictures of the moon in my diary.

However, (in nit-picking mode) the neaps are not the lowest tide of the month, but the difference between HW and LW (the tidal range) is the smallest.

Off the atlantic coast of the UK, we always tried to organise club trips when there were neap tides.... it makes life that much nicer.

What sort of tidal range do you have near you (north sea?) for the neaps and springs? Atlantic coast can be as much as 7m (22ft) range for the springs, and as low as 0.8m for the neaps.

Jon T

 

[Diver0001]

And I thought that I was one of the few people to keep an eye on the dates, and the little pictures of the moon in my diary.

However, (in nit-picking mode) the neaps are not the lowest tide of the month, but the difference between HW and LW (the tidal range) is the smallest.

Off the atlantic coast of the UK, we always tried to organise club trips when there were neap tides.... it makes life that much nicer.

What sort of tidal range do you have near you (north sea?) for the neaps and springs? Atlantic coast can be as much as 7m (22ft) range for the springs, and as low as 0.8m for the neaps.

Jon T

Those are big tides, man. We get tidal ranges in the 3+ metre range during spring tides. At neaps it can be as little as 40cm. The bottom is fairly shallow here. Much of the Oosterschelde is +/- 30 metres and the funnelling effect of some of the narrower shipping lanes can easily lead to currents in the 3-4 km/h range. On one occasion I (we - I was leading the dive) got "flushed" into the middle of a shipping lane during a spring tide (stupid me didn't look carefully at the tide-table before we got in the water). It took us 10 min to swim out to where we were when the tide changed, it probably took another couple of minutes to get organised and leave the bottom to a shallower depth once we realised we were in trouble (and really is trouble-surfacing in a shipping lane in Holland is tantamount to suicide) and it took us 45 min of mid-water swimming parallel to the current to get back to shallows again. It was an ugly dive to say the very least. Long swim back mid water, no reference, ripping current, flying on instruments, dealing with a buddy who was almost OOA to the point where he was pounding his fist on his SPG and begining to get stressed out when I refused to let him surface......but also a personal best in navigation. We came out about 50 meters away from where we went in! These two buddies already called me the 'homing pigeon' but that dive convinced them that it's literally impossible for me to get lost....lol. I wish I had their confidence. I was talking to myself during pretty much the whole swim back "trust your compass, trust your compass......"

R..