A notebook about the hour when the water stops moving
Slack water is the short pause between the flood and the ebb, when the current is neither coming in nor going out. It is the best hour to swim and the worst hour to judge how strong the tide really is. These are notes from that hour, kept irregularly since 2021.
Recent notes
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Reading a tide table backwards
Most tables give you high and low water. What you actually want is the rate of change, and that is not printed anywhere. The rule of twelfths gets you close enough to decide whether to get in.
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Eleven degrees
The temperature where the gasp reflex stops being interesting and starts being a problem. Below it I stop counting minutes and start counting strokes.
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Three things that are not currents
Wind chop, boat wash, and the illusion of drift you get from watching a fixed point on a moving shore. Learning to tell them apart took longer than learning to swim in the cold.
What is here
Three kinds of thing, mostly. Notes are short and undated where the date does not matter. Tides collects the arithmetic I keep forgetting and having to work out again on a cold beach. About explains why any of this is written down at all.