2023/02/09 05:07 1/9 Tides and Currents

Tides and Currents

Notes

Tide and Current predictions are not available for all areas.
OpenCPN comes with a built in tidal data file, but can use any legacy IDX or binary tcd file. Multiple
tidal files can be used at the same time. More about this further down this page.
As with all predictions, the displayed values are calculated using mathematical models and actual
tides and currents will vary.
Variations from the predicted tide may be caused by weather (offshore wind and high barometric
pressure) and can vary easily by 15 minutes and 1 foot. In some remote areas (north) the period of
observation used for the calculation may be relatively short, thus causing the value of the
predictions to be less accurate. Predictions are predictions!

Enable Tides and Currents Display

Click the toolbar button to see tide stations.

Select to see current stations.

Important: tide and currents will not be displayed unless these toolbar buttons are
selected.

Displaying Tides

Available tide stations will show on the chart as green graphs with a “T” logo:
The “T” becomes a yellow and blue vertical bar when the scale is greater than 1:500.000

OpenCPN Manuals - https://opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwiki/

Last
update:
opencpn:opencpn_user_manual:toolbar_buttons:tides_and_currents https://opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=opencpn:opencpn_user_manual:toolbar_buttons:tides_and_currents
2020/01/26
13:45

The vertical bar contains a lot of information at a glance.

The tidal rise is 2.5m above the chart datum. The blue part is “water”. The “V” inside he bar
indicates that the tide is decreasing towards Low Water.

Here, the tide is rising towards High Water.

Low Water looks like this.

High Water Looks like this.

Right click the middle of either icon to see the tidal graph:

https://opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwiki/ Printed on 2023/02/09 05:07

2023/02/09 05:07 3/9 Tides and Currents

If a waypoint, route or a track is, or passes, on top of a tidal icon, a right-click will show a context menu
for those features. To see the tidal graph, press “Show Tide Information” at the bottom of the menu.

The Tidal Dialog gives the name of the station as well as the the name of the Data Source file. This is
important when you have multiple sources covering the same area. Time and height for HW and LW is
displayed in the upper right part.

The Yellow box, with the tidal rise and time, follows the cursor when hovering over the dialog. The time
axis at the bottom displays the time, in this case he timezone is “Z +01:00”, which is the same as one
hour ahead (east) of UTC, that used to be called GMT.

In North America it is common to use a three or four letter acronym for timezones.

UNITED STATES TIME ZONE CODES UTC OFFSET

OpenCPN Manuals - https://opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwiki/

Last
update:
opencpn:opencpn_user_manual:toolbar_buttons:tides_and_currents https://opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=opencpn:opencpn_user_manual:toolbar_buttons:tides_and_currents
2020/01/26
13:45

AST ATLANTIC STANDARD TIME UTC - 4

EST EASTERN STANDARD TIME UTC - 5
EDT EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME UTC - 4
CST CENTRAL STANDARD TIME UTC - 6
CDT CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME UTC - 5
MST MOUNTAIN STANDARD TIME UTC - 7
MDT MOUNTAIN DAYLIGHT TIME UTC - 6
PST PACIFIC STANDARD TIME UTC - 8
PDT PACIFIC DAYLIGHT TIME UTC - 7
AKST ALASKA TIME UTC - 9
AKDT ALASKA DAYLIGHT TIME UTC - 8
HAST HAWAII-ALEUTIAN STANDARD TIME UTC - 10
HADT HAWAII-ALEUTIAN DAYLIGHT TIME UTC - 9
SST SAMOA STANDARD TIME UTC - 11
SDT SAMOA DAYLIGHT TIME UTC - 10
CHST CHAMORRO STANDARD TIME UTC +10

Displaying Currents

Available current stations will show on the chart as orange diamonds, when zooming in arrows will
appear pointing in the direction of the set. Note that “current” here is short for “Tidal Current”, and is the
same as the UK term “Tidal Stream”.

Master current stations are shown like this

in all scales. No direction is associated with these stations but they can be queried, trough a

right click, for the magnitude of the current.

https://opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwiki/ Printed on 2023/02/09 05:07

2023/02/09 05:07 5/9 Tides and Currents

Arrow indicates current direction and strength - the bigger the arrow, the more current.

The size of the arrows can be customized by users in the opencpn.ini (opencpn.conf) file.

In the [Settings/Others] section you can set the option CurrentArrowScale to a positive number
representing a percentage scaling factor of the current arrows. The values below 100 mean the arrows
will be smaller than now, the values above 100 will cause them to be bigger.

OpenCPN Manuals - https://opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwiki/

Last
update:
opencpn:opencpn_user_manual:toolbar_buttons:tides_and_currents https://opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=opencpn:opencpn_user_manual:toolbar_buttons:tides_and_currents
2020/01/26
13:45

A numerical value can be displayed next to the arrow.

To do this go to Options→Ships→AIS Targets and tick the box “Show names with AIS targets at a
scale grater than 1:”, and set a scale. When zoomed in to a scale greater than this, the current will
also be displayed with a number

Right click the orange box to see current graph:

https://opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwiki/ Printed on 2023/02/09 05:07

2023/02/09 05:07 7/9 Tides and Currents

If a waypoint, route or a track is, or passes, on top of a current icon, a rightclick will show a context menu
for those features. To see the current graph, press “Show Current Information” at the bottom of the
menu.

The Yellow box, with time,speed and direction, follows the cursor when hovering over the dialog.

Note that OpenCPN can only display “Reversing Currents” found in restricted waterways, such as rivers
and straits.

The general case with “Rotary Tidal Currents”, can not be displayed with this interface, but are available
for some areas as Grib files. More here

Grib Weather Plugin

Using alternative data sets

OpenCPN supports two tidal file formats. Xtides .tcd file format as well as the default .IDX type. The
latter consits of a pair of files called HARMONIC and HARMONIC.IDX, in a directory.

The default, IDX dataset for tides and currents is limited, mainly for copyright reasons.

[http://www.flaterco.com/xtide/]], a well known free software tidal aplication (GPL license), maintains
regularly updated .tcd files for US. Updated files are normally published in December each year. These

OpenCPN Manuals - https://opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwiki/

Last
update:
opencpn:opencpn_user_manual:toolbar_buttons:tides_and_currents https://opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=opencpn:opencpn_user_manual:toolbar_buttons:tides_and_currents
2020/01/26
13:45

are presently the only area with, up to date freely available, tidal data. The latest updates are available
from the Xtide site, http://www.flaterco.com and ftp://ftp.flaterco.com/xtide/. The “non-free” dataset,
including UK and the Netherlands, is no longer updated. The last update was published 2011.

Please note that OpenCPN differs from XTide results, in very small amounts, usually a few minutes,
regarding the times of slack water. This is due to the older algorithm used in OpenCPN compared to the
most modern XTides implementation of subordinate station time offset calculation

There is currently has a problem when multiple .tcd files are loaded. The reference station may be
incorrectly identified. In practical navigation only one .tcd file is needed at any given time, depending on
which side of the Atlantic you are navigating.

A number of different datasets are available on the Internet, with vastly greater coverage. Some of these
datasets are quite old, and they also contains glitches and errors, many of which have been corrected in
the OpenCPN default dataset.

In many areas there are no free alternatives, and OpenCPN makes it possible to switch between data sets
and even using them at the same time. If two stations are located on exactly the same position, only one
will be visible……

Go to Options→Charts→Tides & Currents. Press “Add Dataset..” to add another dataset.

Tidal files can be located anywhere on your file system, but it will pay off to be organized. The first entry
above shows the default location for the built in datafile on Linux. On windows a typical location is
“C:\Program Files\OpenCPN\tcdata”.

Edit Harmonic File

Refer to this thread in Cruiser Forum Opencpn Harmonic Files

If you edit and break a harmonic file and copyright, don't post it. It is possibble to add/modify Harmonics
data. First get the latest version, might be V10, and then add a line for the new location into the section

https://opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwiki/ Printed on 2023/02/09 05:07

2023/02/09 05:07 9/9 Tides and Currents

of that country into the file HARMONIC.IDX. The data fields of the new line are explained somewhere in
the file HARMONIC.IDX itself:

# &Hmin Hmpy Hoff Lmin Lmpy Loff StaID (tzname) RefFileNum RefName

The # sign marks a line as comment only.

User Guides - Tides

SV Matilda - Tide Function

From:
https://opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwiki/ - OpenCPN Manuals

Permanent link:
https://opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=opencpn:opencpn_user_manual:toolbar_buttons:tides_and_currents

Last update: 2020/01/26 13:45

OpenCPN Manuals - https://opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwiki/