Introduction

You’re planning a weekend cruise from your home marina through a narrow channel, across an open bay, and into a protected anchorage. Each leg has different tidal considerations. The channel requires adequate depth. The bay entrance demands slack current timing. The anchorage needs sufficient water at low tide. Checking three separate tide stations for each planning session becomes tedious fast.

This is exactly why Mariner Studio includes a comprehensive Favorites system for tide monitoring. Rather than searching for the same stations repeatedly, you can save critical locations and access their predictions with a single tap. Whether you’re monitoring your home dock, regular cruising grounds, or seasonal destinations, Tide Favorites transforms scattered planning sessions into organized, efficient navigation preparation.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore how Mariner Studio’s Tide Favorites work, walk through the setup process step-by-step, examine real-world scenarios where monitoring multiple locations simultaneously proves essential, and share professional techniques for organizing your saved stations. By the end, you’ll understand not just how to use this feature, but how to leverage it strategically for safer, more confident navigation decisions.

Understanding Tide Favorites

What Tide Favorites Are

Tide Favorites in Mariner Studio function as bookmarks for tidal prediction locations you need to monitor regularly. Each saved favorite stores a specific NOAA tide station, providing instant access to its complete tidal data: high and low predictions, tidal datums, spring-neap cycles, and historical patterns. Think of favorites as your personalized tide station dashboard—a curated collection of the locations that matter most to your navigation.

Unlike weather favorites that track forecast points, tide favorites connect directly to physical tide stations operated by NOAA. These stations represent actual measurement locations where tidal behavior has been studied and predicted for years, sometimes decades. When you save a station as a favorite, you’re creating a direct link to this authoritative data source.

The system supports unlimited favorites across all subscription tiers, though free users face daily access limits per station. Premium subscribers enjoy unrestricted access to all saved locations, making the feature particularly valuable for mariners who monitor multiple harbors, channels, or cruising areas simultaneously.

How the System Works

Mariner Studio pulls tide prediction data from NOAA’s comprehensive network of over 3,000 tide stations covering the United States coastline, Great Lakes, and territorial waters. Each station provides six-month predictions updated regularly based on astronomical calculations and local tidal characteristics.

When you add a station to your favorites, Mariner Studio creates a persistent connection that survives app restarts and updates. The app doesn’t store complete prediction datasets locally—instead, it maintains station identifiers that fetch fresh data whenever you open a favorite. This ensures you always see current predictions without consuming excessive storage space on your device.

The favorites list synchronizes across devices when logged into your account, meaning stations saved on your iPhone appear automatically on your iPad. This cloud-sync capability proves especially useful for skippers who plan routes on tablets but execute them on phones, or crews sharing navigation responsibilities across multiple devices.

Behind the scenes, Mariner Studio indexes favorites by station ID rather than geographic coordinates. This technical distinction matters because tide predictions require specific station data—interpolating tides between locations produces unreliable results. The app’s architecture ensures each favorite links to actual measurement infrastructure, not estimated values.

When You Need Tide Favorites

Several navigation scenarios demand regular tide monitoring across multiple locations:

Multi-Leg Passages: Coastal cruising often involves sequential tidal environments. A typical day might start in a marina requiring entry depth, transit a channel with current concerns, cross an inlet sensitive to breaking waves at low tide, and end in an anchorage with swinging room considerations. Each location needs different tidal information at different times. Favorites let you check all these stations in sequence without repeated searches.

Regular Commuter Routes: If you run the same route frequently—daily fishing grounds, weekly racing courses, or seasonal cruising loops—monitoring the same tide stations becomes routine. Rather than searching “Admiralty Inlet” or “Deception Pass” every single trip, save them as favorites and pull up predictions in seconds. This efficiency adds up significantly over a season.

Alternative Destinations: Weather changes plans. Having backup destinations already saved as favorites means you can quickly compare tidal conditions at alternative harbors when your primary destination becomes untenable. Instead of scrambling to find and research new tide stations during deteriorating conditions, your pre-selected alternatives are ready to review.

Home Dock Management: Marina slips, moorings, and private docks often have specific tidal constraints. Minimum entry depth, dinghy float access, ramp usability—all depend on tidal stage. Saving your home dock’s reference station as a favorite provides instant checks before leaving for provisions or returning from day sails.

Tidal Current Planning: While Mariner Studio separates tidal currents into their own feature category, current planning often requires referencing nearby tide stations. Strong currents typically correlate with large tidal ranges. Saving both current stations and their associated tide stations as favorites enables comprehensive flow analysis. We’ll explore this integration more in the Understanding Tidal Currents guide.

Spring-Neap Cycle Tracking: Experienced mariners monitor spring-neap cycles for multiple locations simultaneously. Spring tides create stronger currents, more extreme high water, and lower low water—all factors that affect passage planning across different regions. Favorites make it simple to track these cycles for regular cruising grounds without manual station searches.

The common thread across all these scenarios: repetition. Any tide station you check more than twice deserves consideration as a favorite. The time savings accumulate quickly, and the organizational benefits extend beyond mere convenience to improved situational awareness and safer decision-making.

How to Use Tide Favorites

Finding and Adding Your First Tide Station

Let’s walk through the complete process of adding a tide station to your favorites, starting from the main screen.

Step 1: Access the Tides Feature

Open Mariner Studio and tap the “Tides” icon on the bottom navigation bar. You’ll see the main Tides interface, which displays a search bar at the top, a map showing nearby tide stations as blue markers, and your current location (if location services are enabled). The interface defaults to showing stations within your immediate area, typically within 50 miles.

If you haven’t used the Tides feature before, the map view provides excellent context for understanding tide station distribution. Notice how stations cluster in harbors, at channel entrances, and along developed coastlines. This clustering reflects NOAA’s placement strategy—stations are positioned where tidal data matters most to navigation.

Step 2: Search for Your Target Station

Tap the search bar and begin typing your location. The search function accepts several input formats:

• Station names: “Seattle,” “Port Townsend,” “Friday Harbor”
• Geographic features: “Admiralty Inlet,” “Deception Pass,” “Chesapeake Bay Bridge”
• Specific harbors: “Shilshole Marina,” “Eagle Harbor,” “Roche Harbor”
• NOAA station IDs: If you know the official station number (like “9447130”), you can search directly

As you type, Mariner Studio displays matching results in a dropdown list below the search bar. Each result shows the station name, approximate location description, and distance from your current position. This distance indicator helps distinguish between similarly-named locations—”Port Angeles” in Washington differs significantly from Port Angeles locations elsewhere.

Step 3: Select and View Station Details

Tap your desired station from the search results. The app transitions to a detailed station view displaying:

• Station name and location at the top
• Current tidal stage indicator showing rising or falling tide
• Next tide event with time and predicted height
• 7-day prediction table scrollable to see the complete week
• Tidal datum reference showing measurement baseline (typically MLLW)
• Station map with precise marker placement

This detailed view gives you opportunity to verify you’ve selected the correct station before saving. Check the map location carefully—some areas have multiple stations within short distances, and choosing the wrong one compromises your tidal planning.

Step 4: Add to Favorites

Look for the star icon in the top-right corner of the station detail screen. The star appears outlined (empty) for stations not yet favorited. Tap the star once, and it fills solid, confirming the station has been added to your favorites. A brief confirmation message appears: “Added to Tide Favorites.”

That’s it. The station now resides in your favorites list, accessible with minimal navigation from any screen in the app. The process takes perhaps 30 seconds start to finish once you know which station you want—dramatically faster than searching from scratch each time.

Pro Tip on Station Selection: If multiple stations serve the same general area, save the primary station covering your main navigation concern. For example, if entering a harbor is your critical constraint, save the entrance station rather than an interior dock station. You can always add secondary stations later, but start with the location that most influences your go/no-go decisions.

Organizing Multiple Favorites

As your favorites collection grows beyond three or four stations, organization becomes important. While Mariner Studio doesn’t provide folder hierarchies or custom grouping (those features exist in some competing apps), you can employ several strategies to keep your favorites manageable and accessible.

Geographic Grouping Strategy

Most mariners naturally organize favorites by cruising region. Save all stations for a particular area during a single setup session, then add new regions as your cruising grounds expand. For example:

• Home Waters: Marina entrance, local channel markers, nearest reference stations
• Northern Cruising Grounds: San Juan Islands stations, Canadian Gulf Islands, Deception Pass
• Southern Destinations: Columbia River entrance, Oregon coast harbors, Willapa Bay
• Distant Locations: Vacation destinations, aspirational cruising areas

While the app presents favorites in a simple list rather than grouped folders, your mental organization helps you scan the list efficiently. The search function within favorites (available by pulling down on the favorites screen) lets you filter by name, further streamlining access.

Functional Organization

Another approach groups stations by navigational function rather than geography:

• Critical Timing Locations: Stations where tidal stage determines go/no-go decisions
• Depth-Critical Areas: Shallow entrance channels, bar crossings, approaches with shoals
• Current References: Stations that correlate with strong current areas you navigate regularly
• Weather Decision Points: Stations where tide state affects wave action or weather exposure

This functional grouping helps during passage planning. Instead of remembering which geographic area contains which station, you think about your planning needs: “I need to check my depth-critical stations for tomorrow’s passage.” The stations you need are mentally grouped already.

Seasonal Organization

Some mariners save favorites seasonally, adding stations relevant to summer cruising grounds during winter planning, and maintaining a smaller core set during the off-season. This reduces list clutter and keeps the most relevant stations at the top of recent-access lists.

The key with any organization strategy: consistency. Choose an approach that matches how you think about your navigation, then stick with it. The app doesn’t enforce organization schemes, which means discipline falls to you. A little planning up front prevents a chaotic favorites list later.

Accessing and Using Saved Favorites

Once you’ve populated your favorites list, accessing saved stations becomes remarkably quick.

Quick Access Method

From the main Tides screen, look for the “Favorites” button near the top of the interface, typically positioned beside the search bar. Tap “Favorites” and your complete list of saved stations appears, sorted by most recent access by default. Tap any station name to jump directly to its detailed prediction view.

This two-tap access (Tides → Favorites → Station) represents the fastest path to tidal data for locations you monitor regularly. Compare this to the search method: Tides → Search bar → Type location → Select from results → View details. The favorites path eliminates three interaction steps, a significant efficiency gain when checking multiple stations during pre-departure planning.

Map-Based Access

Alternatively, you can access favorites through the map interface. Saved stations display with a distinctive marker (often a filled star versus the open circles for regular stations). Simply tap the favorite’s map marker to view its details. This spatial approach works well when planning routes visually—you can see your favorited stations in geographic context and quickly assess their relevance to your proposed track.

Comparing Multiple Favorites

Here’s where the real power of favorites emerges: rapid comparison across multiple locations. During passage planning, open each favorite in sequence and note critical tide times and heights. For example, checking a three-leg passage:

1. First Favorite: Departure marina – Check depth at planned departure time (0800). Prediction shows 6.2 feet above MLLW. Your draft is 5.5 feet, entry depth adequate. ✓
2. Second Favorite: Mid-passage channel – Check predicted height at transit time (1000). Shows 7.8 feet rising toward high tide at 1147. Channel depth 8 feet below MLLW, total available depth 15.8 feet, plenty of clearance. ✓
3. Third Favorite: Destination anchorage – Check low tide overnight (0243 next morning, 0.8 feet). Minimum water depth 12 feet, reduces to 0.8 feet at low water, gives 12.8 feet total. Your 5.5-foot draft plus 3-foot safety margin needs 8.5 feet minimum—you have adequate swing room. ✓

This systematic check through favorited stations takes perhaps two minutes. Without favorites, searching each station individually might take five to ten minutes, and you’d likely check them less thoroughly due to interaction friction.

Updating and Reviewing Predictions

Tide predictions update automatically when you open a favorite, pulling fresh data from NOAA servers. This happens transparently—you don’t need to manually refresh or update. The most recent data appears immediately, including any corrections or updates NOAA has published since your last check.

For longer-range planning (checking tides for next month’s cruise, for example), scroll down through the prediction table. Each favorite displays extended predictions covering the next six months. This forward visibility enables advanced planning for seasonal cruising, helping you identify optimal tidal windows for challenging passages or constrained destinations.

Removing Stations from Favorites

Favorites lists inevitably need maintenance. Destinations change, cruising grounds shift, or you simply accumulate too many saved stations. Removing favorites is straightforward:

1. Navigate to the station detail view for the favorite you want to remove
2. Tap the filled star icon in the top-right corner
3. The star becomes outlined (unfilled), indicating removal from favorites
4. A confirmation message appears: “Removed from Tide Favorites”

The station doesn’t disappear from Mariner Studio—it remains searchable and accessible through normal station lookup. Only your favorited status changes. You can re-add the station later if circumstances change.

When to Remove Favorites: Consider removing stations you haven’t accessed in a full season, temporary destinations no longer relevant to your cruising, or duplicates serving the same area (sometimes you’ll save both an entrance station and interior dock station, then realize one provides sufficient information). Keep your favorites list focused on stations you actually use regularly.

Real-World Applications

Scenario 1: Multi-Stop Day Cruise Planning

The Situation: You’re planning a Saturday day cruise from Shilshole Bay Marina in Seattle, north through Puget Sound to Port Townsend for lunch, then returning via Admiralty Inlet. Your vessel draws 5 feet, you’re running a single-engine trawler comfortable at 7 knots, and you want to time the trip to minimize current fights while ensuring adequate depths at both ends.

How Tide Favorites Help: With appropriate stations already saved as favorites, your planning session looks like this:

Check Favorite #1: Seattle (Tide) – Your home marina requires 6+ feet of water for comfortable entry with your 5-foot draft plus safety margin. The prediction shows low tide at 0648 (1.2 feet) and high tide at 1308 (11.4 feet). Departing around 0800 gives you 3.5 feet of tide, plus the 12-foot channel depth, equals 15.5 feet total depth—perfectly adequate. ✓

Check Favorite #2: Admiralty Inlet – This station helps you understand the overall tidal regime during your transit. High tide hits at 1308, meaning flood current will dominate your northbound leg. Since you’re heading north with the flood, excellent—you’ll ride a favorable current. The prediction shows a strong flood with 8.7 feet of tidal range, suggesting vigorous current flow. You make a mental note to check your current predictions for Admiralty Inlet more carefully.

Check Favorite #3: Port Townsend – Your destination shows low tide at 0813 (0.6 feet) and high tide at 1422 (8.9 feet). Arriving around 1200-1230, tide will be rising strongly, providing excellent depth at the marina guest dock. The water will continue rising throughout your lunch stop, so no depth concerns. ✓

Check Favorite #4: Admiralty Inlet (second check) – For the return trip, high tide passes at 1422, followed by ebb beginning shortly after. Departing Port Townsend around 1400 means starting your southbound return on early ebb—favorable current again, running with you toward Seattle. Perfect timing. ✓

This planning sequence, checking four tide favorites systematically, takes under three minutes. You’ve confirmed adequate depth at both ends, verified you’ll have favorable current for both legs, and identified the optimal departure window (0800 from Seattle, 1400 from Port Townsend). Without favorites, you’d spend significantly more time searching for each station, likely check them less thoroughly, and might miss the elegant current timing that makes this route so efficient.

The Result: You execute the cruise exactly as planned. Departing Shilshole at 0800 gives plenty of depth. The flood current adds nearly a knot to your speed northbound—you make the 40-mile run to Port Townsend in under six hours despite your 7-knot cruising speed. After a leisurely lunch, you depart at 1400 and ride the ebb south, again seeing favorable current that pushes your effective speed above 7 knots. You arrive back at Shilshole around 1945 with abundant daylight remaining (summer evening) and more than adequate depth for marina entry. The entire cruise succeeds because tide planning was quick, accurate, and comprehensive—made possible by favorites streamlining your station access.

Scenario 2: Monitoring Home Dock Conditions

The Situation: You keep your sailboat on a private dock in a tidal creek that experiences significant range—roughly 10 feet between high and low water. The dock provides ample depth at most tidal stages, but approaches low water awkwardly due to a shallow entrance bar with only 7 feet of depth relative to MLLW. Your keel draws 6 feet, giving you just 1 foot of clearance at MLLW—uncomfortably close.

During spring tides, low water can drop below MLLW (predictions show values like -0.5 or -1.0 feet). On these lowest lows, your clearance disappears entirely. You need to avoid departing or arriving during these critical windows.

How Tide Favorites Help: You’ve saved the nearest tide station (perhaps “Hood Canal Bridge” or whichever station best represents your local tidal regime) as a favorite. Now, any time you’re planning a departure or return, you check this favorite first:

Morning Departure Check: Before leaving for a day sail, you check your home dock favorite. Today shows low tide at 1035 (-0.7 feet). That negative number immediately flags caution—you’ll have only 6.3 feet of water over the bar at low water (7.0 feet at MLLW, minus 0.7 feet of tide). Your 6-foot draft would clear with just 4 inches underneath—unacceptably close, especially if you’ve miscalculated or if the predictions are slightly off.

You decide to wait. High tide follows at 1643 (9.2 feet). Departing then gives you 16.2 feet over the bar (7.0 + 9.2), providing comfortable clearance. You adjust your schedule accordingly, leaving in the late afternoon rather than morning.

Evening Return Check: Sailing back from a day on the water, you check your favorite again. Low tide passed, but it’s 1830 now and tide is rising toward high water at 2147 (9.8 feet). Current height shows 7.3 feet on the prediction table. That gives you 14.3 feet over the bar—plenty of room. You proceed home confidently, knowing you have adequate depth for safe entry.

Spring-Neap Monitoring: Beyond daily checks, you monitor your home dock favorite throughout the month to understand spring-neap cycles. When you notice a series of particularly high highs and low lows approaching (spring tides), you plan to avoid arrivals and departures near low water during that period. Conversely, during neap tides when the range compresses to perhaps 6 feet, you know you’ll have more flexibility—even low water will provide reasonable depth.

This constant awareness of tidal conditions at your home dock prevents groundings, reduces stress, and enables confident scheduling. The favorite ensures you never leave or return without checking—it’s simply too easy to verify conditions to take unnecessary risks.

Scenario 3: Alternative Destination Planning

The Situation: You’re planning a weekend cruise to Blake Island, a popular anchorage in central Puget Sound. But weather forecasts show increasing winds Saturday afternoon—15-20 knots from the south, gusting 25. Blake Island’s primary anchorage faces south, exposing it to exactly these conditions. The anchorage will become rolly and uncomfortable, possibly untenable.

You need alternative destinations with better protection from southern winds. Ideally, you want options north of your current position (Seattle area) that offer northern or eastern exposure—placing the land between you and the forecast winds.

How Tide Favorites Help: You’ve already saved several alternative anchorages as tide favorites during winter cruise planning sessions. Now, with deteriorating weather forcing plan changes, you can quickly evaluate tidal conditions at your alternatives without searching:

Alternative #1: Eagle Harbor – Check your Eagle Harbor favorite. It’s a well-protected harbor with excellent northern wind protection. The tide predictions show low water at 1425 (1.1 feet) and high tide at 2043 (10.2 feet). The harbor entrance has 12 feet of depth at MLLW, giving you 13.1 feet even at low water—adequate for your 5-foot draft. High tide overnight provides even more depth. Tidal current in the entrance is minimal. This works well. ✓

Alternative #2: Port Madison – Another backup, slightly farther north. Your favorite shows similar tidal pattern (this region experiences nearly simultaneous tides). Low at 1437 (0.9 feet), high at 2056 (10.0 feet). Entry depth acceptable, excellent protection from south winds. Also a viable option. ✓

Alternative #3: Poulsbo – Farther into Liberty Bay, excellent protection but requires transiting Agate Pass. Check your Agate Pass current favorite (you’ve wisely saved both tide and current stations for constrained passages). The current prediction shows peak flood through Agate Pass at 1620 (2.1 knots). Not terrible, but notable—you’d want to time your transit accordingly. The Poulsbo tide favorite shows adequate depth throughout the anchorage. Poulsbo works but requires more careful current timing. ✓

You quickly evaluate three alternatives using saved favorites, taking perhaps five minutes total. Without favorites, you’d spend 15-20 minutes searching for each location’s tide station, reading predictions, and assessing suitability. By the time you finished evaluating alternatives, conditions might have deteriorated further, compressing your decision window.

The Decision: You choose Eagle Harbor—closest alternative with simple entry, excellent protection, and straightforward tidal considerations. You alter course, arrive safely by early evening, and enjoy a calm night while Blake Island (visible to the south) shows whitecaps in the anchorage. The favorites enabled quick, confident decision-making exactly when weather forced rapid plan changes.

This scenario demonstrates favorites’ value beyond routine planning. When conditions deteriorate or plans change unexpectedly, having alternatives already researched and saved (including their tide stations) lets you pivot quickly without compromising safety or thoroughness.

Best Practices for Tide Favorites

Strategic Station Selection

Not all tide stations deserve favorite status. Use these criteria to decide which stations to save:

Frequency Rule: Save stations you’ll reference at least three times per season. One-time vacation destinations rarely warrant favorites unless you plan to return. Regular cruising grounds, home waters, and seasonal haunts absolutely deserve favorites. If you find yourself searching for the same station name repeatedly within a month, add it to favorites immediately.

Critical Infrastructure: Prioritize stations that influence go/no-go decisions. Your home marina entrance station merits favorite status. Stations covering tight channels, shallow bars, or constrained passages where tide determines safe transit—these are favorites. Reference stations you check for general information but that don’t affect decisions can often be accessed through normal search without favorites.

One Station Per Area: Most areas function well with a single primary tide station. Puget Sound mariners might save “Seattle” as their central Puget Sound reference, “Admiralty Inlet” for Hood Canal access, and “Friday Harbor” for San Juan Islands—three favorites covering enormous cruising territory. Avoid saving multiple stations for the same location unless they serve different functions (one for channel entrance depth, another for anchorage clearance, for example).

Current Correlation Stations: When you regularly navigate areas with strong tidal currents, save the tide stations that correlate with those currents. Current predictions often reference nearby tide stations for timing. Having both saved as favorites (in this case, one as a tide favorite, one as a current favorite) streamlines integrated planning. We cover this correlation more thoroughly in our Guide to Using Tide and Current Data Together.

Seasonal Additions: Consider creating seasonal favorite sets. Add northern destinations during spring planning, southern harbors for winter cruising grounds. This keeps your active favorites list focused on current needs without permanently cluttering it with stations you’ll only check once per year.

Verification and Accuracy

Tide predictions are only useful if they accurately represent the location you’re navigating. Apply these verification practices:

Check Station Location on Map: When adding a new favorite, always verify its geographic position on the map view. Some harbor names apply to multiple stations (entrance, inner harbor, marina basins). Ensure you’ve selected the station that best represents your actual navigation concern—typically the most constrained or depth-critical location along your route.

Understand Datum References: All NOAA tide predictions reference a datum, usually Mean Lower Low Water (MLLW). Verify your charts use the same datum. If your chart shows depths relative to a different datum (Chart Datum, Mean Low Water, etc.), you’ll need to adjust predictions mentally or mathematically. Fortunately, most modern charts and predictions use MLLW consistently, but always verify.

Compare Predictions to Reality: When first using a new favorite station, compare predictions to observed conditions. Does the predicted high tide time match when you observe maximum water level? Do predicted heights correlate with what you see on pilings, dock faces, or shoreline markers? Most NOAA stations prove extremely accurate, but local factors (unusual weather, barometric pressure anomalies, sustained winds) occasionally create differences. Understanding your station’s typical accuracy builds confidence.

Update Favorites Periodically: NOAA occasionally decommissions old stations or adds new ones. If a favorite station stops providing data or shows odd predictions, search for alternative nearby stations. The app will notify you if a station becomes unavailable, but proactive verification during off-season planning prevents surprises during the cruising season.

Integrating Tides with Other Features

Tide favorites function most powerfully when integrated with Mariner Studio’s other capabilities:

Tide-Current Coordination: Save both tide stations and nearby current stations as favorites. When planning passages through areas with strong flows, check tide favorites first to understand the overall tidal cycle, then verify current predictions to see how that cycle translates to water movement. The tide prediction tells you if it’s flood or ebb; the current prediction tells you how fast the water will move. Both pieces of information together create complete understanding.

Weather-Tide Interaction: Some tide-sensitive locations become more or less critical depending on weather. Check your weather favorites alongside tide favorites. For example, crossing a bar with breaking waves depends on both tide height (more water reduces wave steepness) and weather (wind speed and direction drive wave formation). Looking at favorites for both features simultaneously enables comprehensive risk assessment.

Route Planning Integration: When building routes in Mariner Studio, reference your tide favorites to identify optimal timing. If your route includes waypoints near favorited tide stations, you can quickly determine which waypoints present tidal constraints and adjust your planned departure or arrival times accordingly. This route-tide integration transforms favorites from simple bookmarks to strategic planning tools.

Photo Documentation: Consider photographing tide-critical locations at different tidal stages (high water, low water, slack water). Store these photos with reference to your favorited stations. Visual memory combined with prediction data strengthens your understanding of how tide height translates to real-world conditions at specific locations. While Mariner Studio doesn’t currently integrate photos directly with favorites, maintaining a parallel photo library (in your phone’s Photos app, tagged appropriately) creates powerful memory aids.

Maintaining Your Favorites Library

As your favorites collection grows over seasons, apply these maintenance practices:

Annual Review: Each winter or off-season, review your complete favorites list. Remove stations you didn’t use during the past season. Verify that remaining favorites still serve active cruising plans. Add new stations you found yourself searching repeatedly during the season. This annual housekeeping keeps your favorites relevant and focused.

Trip-Specific Additions: Before extended cruises to new areas, add relevant tide stations as favorites during planning stages. Research the route, identify constrained passages, shallow bars, and critical anchorages, then save their stations. Even if you won’t return to these areas for years, having them saved during the active cruise eliminates underway searching in unfamiliar waters.

Backup Documentation: While Mariner Studio syncs favorites across devices via your account, consider keeping a backup list of your most critical stations (station names and IDs) in a notebook or separate notes app. If you ever need to rebuild favorites from scratch (new account, data loss, etc.), this backup accelerates restoration. Most mariners rarely need this backup, but it’s cheap insurance.

Share with Crew: If you have regular crew or family who participate in navigation, show them your favorites organization scheme. Walk them through which stations cover which areas and why you’ve selected specific stations. This shared understanding means any crew member can check tidal conditions competently, not just the primary navigator. Distributed navigation knowledge improves safety and reduces skipper workload.

Common Questions

Q: Can I sync my tide favorites across multiple devices?

A: Yes. Mariner Studio syncs favorites across all devices logged into the same account. Save a station on your iPhone, and it appears automatically on your iPad. This synchronization happens in the background whenever you’re connected to the internet—you don’t need to manually sync or transfer favorites. The system works seamlessly whether you plan routes on a tablet and execute them on a phone, or simply want access to your favorites from multiple devices. Note that syncing requires an active account; if you use the app without signing in, favorites remain local to that specific device.

Q: Is there a limit to how many tide stations I can save as favorites?

A: No. Mariner Studio imposes no maximum limit on tide favorites for either free or premium users. You could theoretically save hundreds of stations if your navigation required it. That said, most recreational mariners find 10-20 favorites covers their regular cruising grounds adequately. Saving too many stations creates a cluttered list that becomes difficult to scan quickly. It’s better to maintain a focused collection of truly important stations than to save every station you might conceivably reference. Quality over quantity applies to favorites organization.

Q: How do tide favorites differ from weather favorites in Mariner Studio?

A: The mechanics are similar—both features let you bookmark locations for quick access—but the underlying data differs significantly. Tide favorites link to specific NOAA tide prediction stations measuring observed tidal behavior at fixed locations. Weather favorites create forecast points that can be positioned anywhere; they don’t require physical infrastructure. Tide predictions span six months into the future based on astronomical calculations. Weather forecasts typically extend 7-10 days based on numerical models. You’ll often save tide stations for constrained passages and harbors where physical infrastructure exists, while weather favorites might mark open-water waypoints, anchorages, or routing decision points without tide stations nearby. Both favorites types serve complementary planning functions. Learn more about weather favorites in our Complete Guide to Weather Favorites.

Q: What happens to my favorites when NOAA updates or changes a station?

A: Mariner Studio handles station updates automatically. If NOAA publishes improved predictions for a station, the app fetches that updated data the next time you access your favorite—you see the most current information without any action required. If NOAA decommissions a station entirely (rare but occasionally necessary), Mariner Studio will notify you that the favorite is unavailable and suggest searching for alternative nearby stations. The app generally provides six months’ notice before removing decommissioned stations from the database, giving you time to find suitable replacements. In practice, most established tide stations remain operational for decades, making station decommissioning an exceptional occurrence rather than a common concern.

Q: Can I add custom tide stations or create my own predictions for private docks not in the NOAA database?

A: No. Mariner Studio exclusively uses official NOAA tide prediction stations. You cannot create custom predictions or add stations that don’t exist in NOAA’s database. This limitation reflects a deliberate design choice: generating accurate tide predictions requires extensive data collection, astronomical calculations, and local validation. Creating reliable predictions from scratch lies beyond the scope of a navigation app and ventures into specialized scientific modeling. For private docks without nearby stations, the best approach is to find the closest NOAA reference station and mentally adjust for local differences based on observation. Over time, you’ll develop an intuitive sense of how your location’s tides compare to the reference station—”our dock runs 30 minutes later and 0.5 feet lower than the Edmonds station.” Save that reference station as a favorite and apply your learned correction factors.

Q: Do favorites consume significant phone storage?

A: No. Favorites store only station identifiers (essentially short text codes) rather than complete prediction datasets. Even with 50-100 favorites saved, total storage consumption typically measures in kilobytes, negligible on modern devices. The app fetches prediction data from NOAA servers when you open a favorite, meaning most data remains in the cloud rather than on your device. This architecture keeps the app lightweight while ensuring you always access current predictions.

Q: Can I export my favorites list or share it with other Mariner Studio users?

A: Currently, Mariner Studio doesn’t offer favorites export or sharing functionality. Each user maintains their own separate favorites collection. If you want to share a station with crew or friends, you’ll need to tell them the station name or show them how to search for it; they’ll then add it to their own favorites. While some users request favorite sharing capabilities (particularly for charter operations or sailing schools managing multiple clients), the feature hasn’t been implemented yet. The development team considers user requests carefully, so feedback about desired features does influence future updates.

Related Features & Learning

Complementary Mariner Studio Features

Understanding Tidal Currents: Tide favorites work hand-in-hand with current predictions. While tide stations tell you water height, current stations tell you water movement. Many navigation decisions require both—save complementary tide and current stations as favorites for complete environmental awareness.

Weather Favorites System: Just as tide favorites streamline tidal planning, weather favorites accelerate forecast checking. Learn how to organize weather favorites alongside tide favorites for comprehensive pre-departure planning that covers all environmental variables.

Route Planning with Tide Windows: Once you’ve saved critical tide stations as favorites, integrate them into route planning. This guide shows how to use favorited tide data to identify optimal departure times, plan fuel-efficient routes, and avoid tidal constraints.

Spring vs Neap Tide Cycles: Understanding spring-neap cycles transforms how you use tide favorites. Learn to recognize extreme tide patterns in your favorited stations and adjust navigation plans accordingly.

Using Tide Predictions for Safe Bar Crossings: Tide height critically affects bar crossing safety. This safety-focused guide demonstrates how to use favorited tide stations to assess bar crossing windows and minimize breaking wave risks.

Next Steps in Tide Mastery

Once you’ve established a working collection of tide favorites, consider exploring these advanced concepts:

Tidal Datum Deep Dive: Every tide prediction references a datum baseline. Understanding datums improves how you interpret predictions from your favorited stations, especially when comparing predictions to charted depths.

Tide Range Analysis: The difference between high and low tide (tidal range) influences current strength, harbor entry difficulty, and anchoring strategy. Learn to analyze range patterns across your favorited stations.

Secondary Station Corrections: Some NOAA tide stations are secondary stations deriving predictions from primary reference stations with correction factors applied. Knowing which of your favorites are secondary stations helps you understand prediction accuracy and limitations.

Harmonic Analysis: Tide predictions ultimately derive from harmonic analysis of astronomical forces. While you don’t need to understand the mathematics, grasping the basic concept improves your intuition about why predictions occasionally differ from observations.

Conclusion

Tide Favorites in Mariner Studio transform scattered tide planning into organized, efficient navigation preparation. By bookmarking critical stations—home marinas, regular passages, alternative destinations, and seasonal cruising grounds—you eliminate repetitive searching and enable rapid tidal assessment across multiple locations simultaneously.

The feature’s real value emerges not from a single station check but from the compound efficiency of systematic monitoring. Planning a multi-leg passage? Check three favorites in sequence to verify depth and timing at each waypoint. Evaluating alternative anchorages? Compare tidal conditions instantly without searching. Monitoring spring-neap cycles? Review your regular stations to understand extreme tide patterns. Each individual check saves perhaps 30 seconds; accumulated over a season, those seconds become hours of recovered time and significantly improved situational awareness.

Start simple: Save your home dock’s reference station and one or two critical passages you navigate frequently. Over the next few weeks, add destinations as you plan cruises. Within a month, you’ll have assembled a personalized tide station library that perfectly matches your navigation patterns. Your favorites list becomes an extension of your local knowledge, codified in the app and always available.

The next time you check tide predictions before a departure, notice how smoothly favorites streamline the process. Two taps from the main screen to complete prediction data, no searching required. That ease encourages more thorough checking, more frequent verification, and ultimately, safer, more confident navigation decisions. Your favorites work for you, silently and efficiently, every time you plan a passage.