TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands Diving Rhone on a slack tide

My memory serves that you need to dive the Rhone on a slack tide. Does anyone know where I can find a tide table for January 2020? I recall that there was one tide listed for the whole of the BVI, correct?

I remember some pretty good current getting from the dive boat to the wreck. Was not an issue once we were at/in the wreck.

Stay close to bottom when heading into the current to cut down on current affect. We were practically crawling along the bottom.

Only see one tide listed for entire BVI.

BVI Tide Chart

I don't think you are going to notice much of a difference with the tides at the Rhône. But in any case there's only the one tide chart for the BVI and no adjustment points; the currents are low and visibility is barely affected.

I tried to dive the Rhone last year in Dec. The captain of the dive boat dropped the emergency regulator into the water with the normal 2# weight and the regulator never got below 3'-5' from the surface. He estimated it was moving between 6-9knots. I don't know how to estimate from that event, but it was moving pretty quickly and we were unable to dive.

You do get current st the Rhône. I am not sure if it is driven by tides since it seems random. I have gone under in slack water to have a very strong current on return to the boat. I will start watching the tides and see if there is any correlation. Only once was it to strong to dive.
G

6-9 knots lol

I've dived the Rhone 10+ times (one of the advantages of having my own compressor aboard) and never noticed a current or the state of the tide. I think that the divemaster in Kegoangoango's post might have been overestimating the water speed, a human with fins swims at about 2 knots and 6 knots of current would 3 times faster than a person can swim. While a river might get up to those speeds, the currents around the BVI don't. At 6 knots the Rhône itself might have moved And the water would have looked like soup.

A few times each year there are currents depending on the seas,winds and tides where there are rip currents over six knots not only by Salt island but throughout the islands

Sail445 - that is an interesting comment. Apart from during a hurricane, when and where would this be? A quick search of the internet hasn't shown anything and "rip currents" usually get formed by the shape of the underwater surfaces and are regular and don't just pop up anywhere.

As I said, I can't really judge the current speed based on the regulator not sinking. I only reported what the captain said. I will add that no other dive or snorkel boats dove the Rhone that morning. So it must have been a fast enough current to scare everyone off. All the dive boats went to other locations in the area.

It happens whenever you have a bad storm in the Atlantic usually with N seas and heavy S to E wind generated seas colliding with the North seas which cause swift confused currents through the passages between islands.

Sorry I just got a kick out of imagining the skipper approaching the mooring buoy (which has it's own foamy wake) in forward gear at 1800 rpm or so, then dropping a regulator to see if there's too much current to dive. :-)

Approaching a mooring at 1800 rpms ?? Hello

Well, yeah, if you want to keep up with the buoy in 6 to 9 knots of current. Did you read the whole thread?

Currents and tides are not the same things, although marine and estuarine underwater topography may marry the 2 in a difficult matrimony.

In northern New England, our diurnal tidal difference is 11-18 feet of water. Each tide, in total , roughly 12 hrs. That is from fully high, through low, back to full high. Slack tide is roughly 20 minutes ( more or less depending on where you actually are). Scallop and urchin divers seem to get their quotas every day they are allowed, and their quotas take a heckuva lot longer than 40-60 minutes out of 12 hours.

BVI tide table ( one tide daily) for today indicates that low tide was at 8:23 this morning, High tide will be at 11pm this evening, and the tidal difference is about .14 m, which is less than 6 inches over @15.5 hours.

I think my idea of slack tide is far far different than when referring to the BVI tides.

So what is your point?
Everyone understands the difference between currents and tides,tides and wind generated seas.

Well obviously, Sail445, NOT everyone has the same understanding of slack tide. If you use your eyes, you can see the title of this thread.

@cwoody,

Thanks for the tide table. That looks to only go out one week. My trip is in January. Does anyone know a tide table that goes out a month or so?

I did quite a bit of diving last week. We had no current issues anywhere which is unusual. What we did have was the worst vis I have seen in 25 years of diving the BVI. 30 feet was about as good as we saw all week. My compass got a workout!

@ georgeC1,

Did you dive the Rhone? The Rhone is the only tide dependent dive I know of in the BVI. What sites did you dive?

We dove the Rhône, wreck alley, angelfish reef, playgrounds, WillyT, Blonde Rock and the Fearless. Blonde Rock usually has the worst current.

For posterity, here’s the response from the local dive shop in Nanny Cay:

Thank you for your email. No the Rhone does not need to be dived on slack tide, so you do not need a tide table. However please be aware that the current on the Rhone can sometimes be extremely strong. We always drop a weighed line at the beginning of our dive to check on the current, if the line disappears behind the boat we go else where, if there is a slight current we advise divers, that it might increase during the dive, and if it does to stick close to the bottom, where the current is less. We have not had to pull off the Rhone for a while now!

We dove it on January 1st and had no current issues.