Fishin' Frenzy

A surf day is mostly arithmetic done badly in your head: the tide was low at breakfast, it is coming in now, and somewhere between the two there is an hour that will actually be worth the drive. This planner does that arithmetic properly and shows you the answer as a picture. Start by naming the spot you have in mind. Then type in the day's tides — the time and the height of each high and each low — and choose the water level you most like to surf. From those few figures the app draws the tide curve for the whole day, a single line rising and falling from morning to evening, so the shape of the water is something you can look at rather than something you have to work out. Your preferred level becomes a band laid across that curve. Every hour of the day that falls inside the band is highlighted, and the longest unbroken stretch of them is named outright: that is your window to paddle out. If the tide only brushes your level twice in short bursts, you will see that too, and you can decide whether it is worth going at all or whether to shift your plans to the following day. Change the level you have chosen and the band moves with it, which makes it easy to compare the spot you know well against the one you have only heard about. Once the window is settled, the spot and the hours you have chosen carry straight over into a packing checklist, and the length of that list is sized to the trip itself. A short session near home asks less of you than a long day away, and the checklist reflects that rather than handing you the same undifferentiated pile of items every time. You tick things off as they go into the boot, and what is left showing is what you have not yet packed. It is a deliberately plain tool. There is no account to set up, no ads to sit through and nothing to buy — you enter the numbers, read the curve and go. That makes it quick enough to use in the five minutes between reading the tide table and picking up your board, which is usually the only five minutes anyone has. Useful for anyone planning around the water rather than around the clock: surfers choosing between two breaks, longboarders who want a particular depth over a reef, parents working out when the sandbar will be walkable, and anyone who has turned up at the right beach at entirely the wrong hour and would rather not do it twice.

Cobrano Wave 2.0