Captain’s guides
What we check before casting off.
Every trip starts with the same questions. What does the wind look like? What will the current do to the crossing? Is the window any good? These guides answer them the way we would on the dock: straight, specific, and with the sources so you can check us. How TidePilot runs the same homework for your boat and route is on the methodology page.
Choosing a departure window
What makes a window good: wind and seas inside your limits for the whole run, current working with the legs that matter, daylight, and margin.
How wind, swell, tide, and current interact along a route
The four forces do not add politely. Wind against current steepens seas, period matters more than height, and current rewrites every ETA.
What each forecast model tells boaters
NOAA forecasts, GFS, ECMWF, WaveWatch III, and buoy observations each answer a different question. Disagreement between them is information.
Elliott Bay to Port Townsend: planning factors
A roughly 30 to 35 nautical mile Puget Sound run where the planning story is current timing in Admiralty Inlet and what the wind does against it.
Calculating fuel reserve for your boat
The rule of thirds is the floor, not the plan. Real reserve math starts from burn rate, hours at your actual speed, and the slowest realistic run.
Weather app, planning advisor, chartplotter: three different jobs
One shows conditions, one reasons across them into a brief for your boat before you leave, one navigates underway. None replaces the others.
The read before you leave™. Plan with TidePilot.