Chronglobal Tide App

Chronglobal has developed a new app for iPhones. It's a tide table, but it reads like a watch. Easy to read and easy to use, I like this one.

ChronGlobal's new tide table app works with all iPhone, iPads, and iPods, and it will soon work with Androids. For all us anglers who need to know what the tide is doing at any given time of the day - and that would be all of us folks! - this app will do just that.

Features

The ChronGlobal app has the following features:

• Automatically retrieves local tide predictions from over 9400 tide stations worldwide. Optional manual station selection.
• Virtual watch for the visual depiction of the tide level at the current time, and up to to 7 days into the future.
• Tidal watch face shows the current tide level and hours to high and low tide, as well as the current moon phase (for predicting neap and spring tides).
• Virtual watch for current moon phase and the relative position of the moon in the sky. (moonrise/set)
• Virtual watch for relative position of the Sun in the sky. (Sunrise/set).
• Set the watch to up to 7 days into the future to see all relevant predictions for that time, By the minute, hour or day.
• Information screen for detailed information about tidal and celestial events for up to 7 days in advance.
• GPS based location tracking for accurate local tidal predictions. Adjustable tracking parameters.
• Favorite tide stations list.
• Imperial or metric units.

Setting It Up

It took a few minutes of probing around this new app to get used to it. That's not bad and it's no surprise because that happens on any new application for my iPhone. Navigating the app is very intuitive and easy to understand after only a few trips through all the screens. I was clicking back and forth between lunar, solar and tide tables in no time.

Ordinarily I don't take my iPhone out on the boat unless I have a real need. Too many friends have lost their overboard or to the weather elements, so it usually stays under the console in a secure dry spot. I thought perhaps this app would cause me some problems, knowing I would have my phone out on the water. But just a little care and caution was all I needed, and the phone stays dry!

It's not like I had the phone out every minute of the day. Just a check every now and then to see how much time I had left until the tide changed was all it needed. In actuality, once I knew the tide situation at the beginning of the trip, I really did not access it the rest of the day. On one trip, I fished the river mouth and knew what the tides would be when I checked them early in the day. But I made a run back inshore and into an estuary creek. The tide can be as much as an hour or more off from the river mouth, so I did a quick check to find out what I would be facing way back in this creek. The multiple "favorite locations" list came in handy. All I had to do was click on the one I needed and the tides show up for me.

Much like setting up GPS numbers on a new GPS unit, when I first loaded the app, I spent about an hour picking through the list of over 9500 tide locations to get my favorites listed. This is a tedious task, as you must go through the entire list in alphabetical order each time to find a location. But, once you have your favorites listed, you don;t have to access that alpha list again.

Solar, Lunar, and Tides

For those of you who like to use solunar tables to find the best feeding times, this app has a lunar page and a solar page. The solunar tables themselves are not there - as you know they are different for every location, but you can see where the sun is - sunrise, sunset times, and you can see where the moon is and what phase the moon is in.

A simple click takes you from one page to the other, and all three pages have the watch face with the accurate time at your current location. You can select the time at your fishing location as well, if it happens to be in a different time zone.

I like this app. The fact that it uses the GPS on your phone to tell you the time and the current tide situation is a plus. But don't be led to think it will find the tide exactly where you are. It defers to the closet measurement location of all the 9500 stations. I initially thought it was going to calculate right to my GPS location. But, there are so many locations, that you can get awfully close!

I have been using the app daily for a couple of weeks now, and it is accurate, and easy to use. Once I learned my way around, it became almost second nature. There are numerous tide apps out there - some are free and some cost you a couple of bucks. None of them will break your wallet. So the choice becomes one of functionality and ease of use. ChronGlobal's entry to the tide game is as functional as they get with the moon and sun information at the touch of a finger, and the price is right - like I said, it's not going to break your wallet. I recommend this one for those of you with an iPhone or Android.