We wanted to give you an exclusive look at an article from our new issue. In How To Read A Tide Table, you will learn what you need to know about tide tables to help keep you safe on the coast. Not a sea kayaker? Update your paddlesports preferences, and we’ll make sure you get more of the stories and skills that matter most to you.

— Paddling Magazine

It was the sound of two boats bumping together that made me sit bolt upright in my tent. Kayaks, as a rule, are supposed to be high and dry at night, and the only reason they make that sound is if they aren’t.

Headlamp on and Crocs hastily donned, I waded across the isthmus from my tent toward where the boats had been tied to a tree at the forest edge. I was deep in an inlet in eastern Clayoquot Sound, and losing a boat would qualify, by industry standards, as a capital “P” problem.

The kayaks themselves were fine, bobbing gently where they’d been secured. What wasn’t fine was the water, now up to my thighs. The fly of the closest tent was sitting in four inches of water, and the tide was still rising.

I woke Bill, who was still fast asleep, saying, “Your tent is underwater, and I need you to wake up without moving.” We managed to float him on his inflatable sleeping pad (now more of a pool toy), extract him from his sleeping bag, and relocate both him and the tent to higher ground. The rest of the group followed suit.

It wasn’t until much later I sat down and traced the chain of decisions that led us there. A handful of small errors—in math, lunar cycle awareness and ocean physics—had aligned perfectly. The lesson stuck, and I’ve since shared it with countless students.

You’ll often hear people talk about tidal range. Simply put, range is the difference in height between high and low tide. That difference varies dramatically depending on the alignment of the sun and moon, their distance from Earth, and the Earth’s axial tilt. When forces align, tides are large; when they oppose each other, tides are small.

In Ucluelet, British Columbia, where I live, the largest theoretical tidal range is about 13.5 feet (4.1 meters), but most days are nothing close to that. Tides here can range from as little as one foot (30 centimeters) to the maximum. On the biggest days, saltwater pushes right up into the roots of dense coastal forest. This variability is why tide tables matter…

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