There is a relatively new (1 year?) permanently exposed sandbar at the entrance which now has some vegetation. On the Venus Bay side the bar a continuous sand buildup is occurring due to water swirling back during an outgoing tide. There is even a signpost on the bar which proclaims it as "Charlie's Island" with distances to various cities and the pub

Hmm.. Can get one surrounded by a porthole or a ship's wheel for $160.
Not really interested in that, could buy another fin with tat much and would rather have it decorated with P. Anderson, thanks.
Plan to add 6 inches to pendulum of wall clock was vetoed.
Stymied...

I appreciate that tidal currents are of no concern to them sufficently skilled to plane at a rate that "makes the waves appear to be frozen".
But a ten knot wind following a ten knot tide is a real pain to beat upwind against.
Having missed most of the fronts recently, my latest response is to leave the van loaded and head off at a moments notice, calling out "Wind blowin, I'm goin! " and I want to check the tide as I go out the door, so as to make various decisions involving missing 200 meter sand treks, 2000 meter road treks and various obstacles likely to produce fin failure.
I know that correct planning for sea breezes involves some graphical interpretation after dialing up the world wide wait, but not every time?
A tide clock goes around every 12 hours and 25 minutes and has "High Tide" and "Low Tide" at the top and bottom of it's face. What could be simpler?

Hi Nebbian, I suspect that your startling rate of progress is due to considerable non-planing experience in the past? I want to perfect a planing tack that will take me upwind at a great rate (convert all that momentum into useful distance). So I will begin with developing non-planing back-of-sail skill as this is thelogical way to do it.
Thanks for the clock link- the customer report of expensive ones not working is a bit sus though.
I have now heard that a place in Wonthagi is selling them to fishermen so will head that way if my latest effort is in vain. This involves swapping the quartz crystal from a 12 hour 20 minute defunct refrigerator countdown timer into a standard quartz wallclock.
Got time to fiddle as my left arm now needs a week to recover after the most exciting voyage forquite a while (an old hang-gliding injury requires that arm to never to be fully straightened) :(
Did you know that Sven thingo owns Starboard and Jim Drake was an aeronautical engineer?
http://www.scandasia.com/viewNews.php?news_id=2185&coun_code=no

There we go- stuck the little hand onto the LG timer which is mounted in the clock face. It doesn't have an IC, it has a tiny motor running off the mains. This provides the additional feature of electrocuting anybody who messes with it.
Actually, seems a better idea is a Casio Tide Watch that also shows moon phases to indicate the lowest tides.