Aye for Ayetides

Here is an app I recently downloaded to my iPod touch. In traveling around the world, I wanted a tide app that is easy to use and work with iNavX in the iPad. Ayetides XL does that, and I'm using it's little brother, Ayetides, available for the iPhone and iPod Touch for $9.99.

Here is a standard tide table screen from AyeTides, one of the best standalone tide apps for sailors traveling around the world. In addition to high and low tides, it shows sun and moon rise and setting times. Near the top you see the water height at the present moment and the arrow indicating a falling tide. Scroll sideways to move days forward or backward.

Most important for choosing a tide app is its specificity for your area. This app is purported to have over 9,900 tide stations in it's list, however, you may do better for your local area by purchasing an app specific for your area.

Importantly, AyeTides stores all data on your device - you don’t need connectivity on the boat to have all tide areas at your fingertips.

Here is AyeTides’ graph of today’s tides, the clear circle at the top showing the present moment. You can tap or drag the circle around to see the water level at different times.

The app has been designed for ease and speed of use. To toggle between the standard table and the graph shown here, just rotate your iPhone or iPod Touch and the accelerometer makes the change for you.


Touching the little "i" located in the top right of my first picture, flips the page and shows the tide station location with a lat and long.

In the finding a station window, you can find by, Alphabet, Geographic, Nearest Station, and Recently Opened. You can also save a tide station as a favorite and that has it's own list window. There are some preferences to change to your liking.

There are two types of stations in AyeTides, currents (tidal streams) and tides. You don't see the depth at a current station and you don't see the current at a tide station. To see the nearest current station, tap on the info button (the 'i'), select "Find Nearby Stations" and look for the first station that's in bold. Alternatively, go to the main view's Find a Station menu and in the Alphabetical list, tap the search button and enter the word "Current". This will show you all the current stations in AyeTides.

A significant benefit of the current data is that boaters can easily and immediately correct the common erroneous assumption that the ebb current begins at high tide and the flood current at low tide. In reality, there is a time lag before the current reverses and starts up again that depending on local factors can be longer than an hour. If you’re guessing about tidal current changes based on high and low tide times, you can be surprised and perhaps caught unaware.

Accuracy? Pretty close!! I checked it against two different tide charts available off the internet for Gladstone, Australia. The Ayetides showed a High Tide at 11.48am at 3.74 Meters.
The other tide tables from the internet, showed 11.54@3.8M  and 11.44@3.77M . I could be happy with that. I'd give it 8.5 out of 10