How Can the Moon Affect Tides?
Don t believe everything you hear, especially around marinas and bait stores where the “old salts” spin their yarns. When you hear boaters referring to ebb tide, or incoming tide or outgoing tide, it may be familiar language, but it is not accurate. Tide does not ebb, nor does it come in or go out. • Tide is defined as the vertical movement of water and only goes up and down. • Current is the horizontal or sideways flow of water. It floods in which makes the tide rise and ebbs out which makes the tide fall. It is this up and down tidal movement that you should be concerned with and be able to estimate with some accuracy, especially when entering a potentially shallow port or harbor. Let s explore some definitions concerning tide. First of all, tide is the rise and fall of water caused by gravitational forces of the moon and sun on the oceans of the earth. Generally speaking, tidal cycles contain two high tides and two low tides each day. During the time between high and low tide there
