Surfing Waves

Anybody use these? Are they worth the roughly $100 investment? Would love to hear any thoughts and/or recommendations for models. Looking at this model (Vestal BRG012 Brig Tide and Train) based on reviews.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008UY ... DU5TKDNWO6

Thanks!

I've had a few different ones, and I use them routinely. I find them most useful for a quick check of which beach is most likely to be working (I have a lot of options) and also, while Im out in the surf, I'll often check the tide to see whether the conditions are likely to improve or not.

I had a RipCurl which was pretty good, very easy to read at just a glance. Eventually the strap broke and I haven't got round to fixing it, but it lasted years.

Currently got a Nixon one - the watch is great, but the instructions that come with it are dreadful, so there have been a couple of moments when I couldn't work something out or I thought it had gone wrong.
The Nixon one tells you (roughly) the height of the tide as well as the time, which is pretty useful.

Gimmick? Possibly - you could just look it up, and there's not a lot of point in knowing if you're going anyway, but I find them useful

I have the tide table on my phone so just look it up. The tide will peak 1 hour later every day, so if its high tide at 6am today, then it will be 7am tomorrow (I think technically the tides are 24 hrs 50 min apart - so 50 min later every day). So that means there is about 6hr 15 min between tides (so low tide is 6hr 15 - really 6hr 12.5min - after high tide, then there is another high tide 6hrs later)

So if you know the tide for one day you can roughly figure it out for the rest of the day/week. If its high tide today at 6am, low tide is about 12.15pm, the next high tide is about 6.30pm, low tide 12.45am, high tide is 7am the next day (add 6.15 each time - or 1 hour to get the next day)

The main variable is the tide size, for that you need a chart or a watch. Plus you need to know your spot - most of mine are bad at high tide (shore break only) but in other spots high tide can be better.

On the down side of not having a watch, I never know the time when I'm surfing. So I dont know whether I am going to get in trouble for being out for too long or not...

Thanks for the replies! I appreciate the info.

The tide thing is difficult there are places that can two tides per day or four and some even skip a tide. All the watches fail at the weird ones. Then waves like tidal bores are highly predictable , but not by watches.
Even on the east coast of Australia the tides times vary and the times between the same tides vary each day!.
Use this fact to go and personally check tide and conditions each day!