To fully enjoy your tide clock you need to appreciate that the
gravitational pull of the moon is not completely consistent over the
lunar month. As a result of this, there are slight fluctuations in the
time between daily high and low tides and, as mentioned already,
the 6 hours and 12 ½ minutes is an
average.
Variations either side of
this may be up to an hour but are normal and to be expected of any
tide clock.
Throughout the month your Tide Clock should remain a useful,
practical guide to the condition of your local tide. If however,
you are having difficulties with getting it to synchronise with
local tide timings it is not useful to keep changing the settings.
Try setting the clock to high tide at a full or new moon to ensure
maximum accuracy. It’s also worth noting that pressing the demo
button excessively could result in your clock eventually becoming
noticeably out of sync.
Finally, please remember that not every coastal location has a
standard semi-diurnal tide. The classic example on the British
coast is the Solent area where the effect of the water moving around
the Isle of Wight causes dramatically different tide patterns on the
nearby coast. In such locations, other factors such as the shape of
the coastline are coming into play and no semi-diurnal tide clock
will be accurate.
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