Navigating the East River - Slack Water

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Slack Water at Hell Gate

The simplest and most accurate way to determine the time of slack water at Hell Gate, is to simply check the Current Tables for the date in question and extract the information. Here is a sampling of the NOAA Current Tables for Hell Gate in April 2011.

From looking at the table below, you can see that slack water at Hell Gate on the 1st of April occurs at 0330, 0934, 1549, and 2148.

     HELL GATE (off Mill Rock)
Predicted Tidal Current April, 2011
Flood Direction, 050 True. Ebb (-)Direction, 230 True.
NOAA, National Ocean Service

  Slack
Water		 Maximum
Current		 Slack
Water		 Maximum
Current		 Slack
Water		 Maximum
Current		 Slack
Water		 Maximum
Current		 Slack
Water		 Maximum
Current
Day Time
h.m.		 Time
h.m.		 Veloc
knots		 Time
h.m.		 Time
h.m.		 Veloc
knots		 Time
h.m.		 Time
h.m.		 Veloc
knots		 Time
h.m.		 Time
h.m.		 Veloc
knots		 Time
h.m.		 Time
h.m.		 Veloc
knots
1   0017 -4.4 0330 0638 +3.5 0934 1235 -4.4 1549 1853 +3.4 2148
2   0048 -4.6 0408 0712 +3.6 1012 1305 -4.5 1625 1926 +3.5 2226
3   0119 -4.7 0444 0745 +3.6 1050 1336 -4.6 1700 1959 +3.6 2302
4   0152 -4.8 0520 0819 +3.6 1127 1410 -4.7 1735 2032 +3.6 2339

Hell Gate Rule-of-Thumb

In the event that you do not have access to Current Tables, you can use the following time offsets. On average, slack water at Hell Gate occurs 01:46 after high water and 01:43 after low water at The Battery. Adding these corrections to the times of high or low water will give you a close approximation of the times of slack water at Hell Gate.

As a practical matter I use this system, but to avoid having to remember 2 different time corrections, I simply use 01:45 for both high and low water.

 April - New York

    Date       Day  Time       Height   Time       Height   Time       Height     
    04/01/2011 Fri 01:42AM LDT 0.3  L  07:49AM LDT 4.7  H  01:57PM LDT 0.1  L    
    04/02/2011 Sat 02:25AM LDT 0.1  L  08:28AM LDT 4.7  H  02:36PM LDT 0.1  L    
    04/03/2011 Sun 03:06AM LDT 0.1  L  09:04AM LDT 4.7  H  03:12PM LDT 0.1  L

As can be seen in the Tide Table excerpt above, the first low water of the day for April 1st is 0142. Adding the low water time correction of 01:43 to that, you get a time of slack water of 0325 which is within 5 minutes of the 0330 predicted time.

The same thing can be done with high water. The first high water occurs at 0749. Adding the high water time correction of 01:46 to that, you get a time of slack water of 0935 which is within 1 minute of the predicted time.

As you can see this is not as accurate as using the published Current Tables and differences of as much as 15 minutes have been noted, but it does provide you with sufficient enough accuracy to plan your passage in the event you do not have access to the published tidal current data.


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