Tides Tables - Day 103 - Captiva, FL

Tides become considerably more important as we move further south into the Keys and then up the east coast where the tidal range increases and the water, in places, gets shallower.

The Sea Ray Navigator II has the ability to display tides for the boat's specific GPS location and for anywhere else in the US, which is useful for planning purposes.

So, on Wednesday morning I prepared for an 8:00 AM discussion with Mark Pringle of Nautical Solutions Internation.  Mark's company supports the Sea Ray Navigator and he is has helped me numerous times with problems and questions.

The Navigator II is based on a Windows computer.   Preparation requires hooking up the remote hard drive, which is shown in the photo below just forward of the wheel.  Hooking it up requires inserting the USB plug into a receptacle just to the right and under the throttles, which thanks to Sea Ray is difficult to access.  It also requires running a 120 volt extension cord to power it.  Again, Sea Ray did not install a 120 volt outlet at the helm, which given the exorbitant price of the Sea Ray Navigator and the need to access the Windows software, was clearly appropriate.  So two demerits for Sea Ray.

Note: Sea Ray also earns another demerit for installing a system from a company that went defunct and then not stepping up to support the users.

Preparing to install the tides tables.

It took a total of an hour including preparation and discussion with Mark to get the tables installed.  The time was well spent.  Below is the dialogue box that appeas when you access tide information for a specific location.  Note the controls at the bottom of the graph that enable the user to look ahead or back or to a specific date or location.  The information at the top of the screen has three blocks; location, sunrise/sunset and a text version of high and low tide times and tidal range.

Tide table presentation overlaying the Navigation screen

You may ask why this was not installed earlier?  Good question with two answers.  First there are no tides on the Great Lakes.  Second, even though the tidal range on the Gulf is small, I really should have installed it earlier. 

Written by Les.