TideTrack
Free · Puget Sound & the Salish Sea

Find the fastest sailing route on the best, freshest wind and current forecasts for the Salish Sea.

TideTrack routes your boat through NOAA’s HRRR wind model, refreshed every hour, and SSCOFS, the most detailed publicly available current model for Puget Sound and the Salish Sea, with official NOAA tide predictions alongside. Drop two points, pick a departure time and get the fastest path, not the straight line.

Open the planner See how it works

No password. Sign in with a one-time email code. Works on phone, tablet and desktop, and installs as an app.

TideTrack on a laptop showing an optimised sailing route over wind and current forecasts of Puget Sound
TideTrack on a phone showing a route result
Built on NOAA HRRR windNOAA SSCOFS tidal currentsNOAA CO-OPS · CHS tidesNOAA ENC charts & depthsNDBC · METAR observationsLive AIS vessel traffic
What it’s for

For Puget Sound sailors who want one easy-to-use planning assistant.

Deliveries through big current

Moving a boat through Deception Pass, the Tacoma Narrows or Admiralty Inlet? TideTrack picks the departure time and the side of the channel that saves hours and fuel, under sail or under power.

Pre-planning races and day sails

Try tomorrow’s course before you leave the dock: which way around Vashon or Blake Island, when to cross the Sound, where the ebb helps and where it hurts. Compare departure times in seconds.

Re-routing under way

Forecasts refresh every hour. Recalculate from your current position on your phone and see whether the plan still holds, or whether the new wind says tack now.

How it works

Three taps from “where to?” to a plan you can sail.

TideTrack uses isochrone routing: it grows a frontier of every position your boat could reach in the next time step, again and again, until the frontier touches your destination. The result is the fastest path through the forecast, not a straight line.

01

Drop start and finish

Centre the crosshair on your marina, mark or anchorage and confirm. Add waypoints or a gate to force the route past a mark.

02

Pick a departure time

Leave now, or scrub the timeline to try tomorrow’s ebb. The wind and current layers update as you move it.

03

Calculate

Get the optimal track, an ETA, hourly isochrones and the wind and current you will meet along the way. Export to GPX for your chartplotter.

What you get

Everything a Salish Sea sailor checks before leaving the dock, in one map.

Hourly HRRR wind

NOAA’s 3 km High-Resolution Rapid Refresh model, the best public wind forecast for the region, refreshed every hour and interpolated to 250 m so headlands and channels resolve.

SSCOFS tidal currents

NOAA’s Salish Sea and Columbia River Operational Forecast System is the most sophisticated current model for the region, resolving eddies and back-currents pass by pass. TideTrack has it built in and ready to route on: no GRIB downloads, no desktop install, no subscription.

NOAA tide heights

Official NOAA CO-OPS and Canadian CHS predictions at more than 170 Salish Sea stations: height and trend at the time you are planning for, the next 48 hours of highs and lows, and the observed water level wherever there is a live gauge. Tap a high or low to jump the timeline to it.

Live AIS traffic

Ferries, freighters and racers with course predictor lines and closest-point-of-approach warnings. Streams from aisstream.io by default, or from your own AIS receiver through a small local WebSocket bridge (setup guide to follow).

Ensemble confidence

Sixteen perturbed forecasts are routed together and drawn as a heat map, so you can see where the plan is solid and where it hinges on the forecast.

Sail, motor or mixed

Route on J/105 polars, at motoring speed, or let it fire up the engine automatically when the wind drops below your threshold.

Charts, depth and observations

A clean vector chart drawn from NOAA ENC data: depth shading against your draft, contours and soundings, buoys and lights, traffic lanes and island names, plus the last few hours of buoy, airport and tide-gauge observations to sanity-check the model.

New · Tide heights

Know the height of tide at every stop.

Turn on the Tides layer and every NOAA and CHS station shows its predicted height and whether it is rising or falling at the time on your slider. Open a station for the 48-hour curve, the next highs and lows and, where there is a live gauge, the observed water level against the prediction. Scrub the curve or tap a high or low and the whole map follows.

TideTrack showing tide heights at NOAA stations around Puget Sound, with the Seattle station card open: a 48-hour tide curve, predicted and observed water level, and the next highs and lows
Coverage

Olympia to Neah Bay to the Gulf Islands.

Forecast data covers the whole Salish Sea: Puget Sound, Hood Canal, Admiralty Inlet, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the San Juan and Gulf Islands and the Strait of Georgia. Chart depth data is currently limited to US waters.

SeattleTacomaOlympiaEverettBellinghamPort TownsendAnacortesFriday HarborVictoriaHood CanalAdmiralty InletStrait of Juan de FucaStrait of Georgia
Wind and current probe readout over the Salish Sea
FAQ

Common questions

Is TideTrack free?

Yes. It is an evolving personal project that incorporates what the author has found useful so far sailing in the region. You sign in with your email address and a one-time code; there is no password and nothing to pay.

Which boats does it support?

Routing currently uses J/105 polars, with motoring and mixed sail-and-motor modes. More one-design and cruising polars are on the list; the optimizer itself is boat-agnostic.

How good are the forecasts?

Wind comes from NOAA’s HRRR model and currents from NOAA’s SSCOFS model, the best publicly available sources for the region. Both are simulations, not measurements, and they are sometimes wrong. The observations layer, with the latest buoy and airport reports, and the ensemble heat map show you how much to trust a plan. Tide heights are different: they are the official NOAA and CHS predictions, the same predictions behind the printed tide tables, with the observed water level shown alongside where a station has a live gauge. Next on the roadmap: correcting HRRR wind against local observations and terrain.

Does it show tide heights?

Yes. Turn on the Tides layer and more than 170 stations across the Salish Sea show their predicted height and whether the tide is rising or falling at the time on your slider. Open a station for the 48-hour curve, the next highs and lows and, where there is a live gauge, the observed water level against the prediction. US stations are NOAA CO-OPS predictions in feet above MLLW; BC stations are Canadian Hydrographic Service predictions in metres above chart datum.

Does it work on my phone?

Yes. The planner is a web app that runs in any modern browser and can be added to your home screen so it opens like a native app.

Do I need an internet connection?

Yes. Forecasts, chart tiles, AIS traffic and the route optimizer are all fetched live, so TideTrack needs a data connection while you use it. Cellular is fine; it does not work offline.

Can I use the route on my chartplotter?

Every route can be exported as a GPX file, which imports into OpenCPN, Navionics, Garmin, B&G and most other plotters.

Can I use my own AIS receiver?

Yes. Run a small WebSocket bridge on your boat network that relays your receiver’s AIS messages, point TideTrack at it, and it uses your receiver instead of aisstream.io. A setup guide is coming.

Is it safe to navigate with?

No. TideTrack is a planning aid. Always navigate with official charts, keep a proper lookout and use your own judgement.

Ready to plan your next passage?

Open the planner, drop two points and see what the tide is doing tomorrow.

Open the planner