>
>Something that would be really useful would be a table for tide
>differentials for various nice birding spots, i.e. Tokeland. When
>I went there last week I had no idea of how to relate high tide
>elsewhere with high tide there. I'd guess that if the Tweets
>put their heads together regarding their knowledge of favorite
>tidal areas that such a chart could be collated.

I don't have a coplete answer for Don on this one but I think those
corrections are available. I frequently use the computer program called
"current master" to predict both tides and currents. It is a DOS program
available in most SCUBA shops and in marine and map stores. You get a disk
for each year (its cheap) and it very easily gives you corrections for any
area in Puget Sound, the Straight, the San Juans, and up along Vancouver
Island. Its accurate, I have even used it in my surveying business (it
basically copies the NOAA tables, and adds graphing capabilities and does
the correction computations for you, so you don't have to think).

Current master does not have the Pacific Beaches, but I am certain that
there are corrections for the Grays Harbor area, Willapa Bay, and the mouth
of the Columbia. Toke Point is one of the areas that NOAA keeps tidal
records on. If you're interested, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has a
free little windows program called "tidetest" which gives the tidal ranges
for the entire Washington Coast, and it has 10 stations listed in Willapa
Bay, from Toke point down to the south end just above Ilwaco. I don't
happen to have a copy of NOAA's tide table books (also available in marine
and in map stores) but with that much information they must have the
corrections for those beaches published.

-------------------------------------
Name: Jerry Broadus
jbroadus at seanet.com
901-16th. St S.W.
Puyallup, Wa. 98371
206-845-3156
Time: 20:18:56