yep, i got an analogue tidemaster from rip curl, and it was useless for tide predictions. the technicians at rip curl head office were less helpful than the watch; their advice was that the tides in the north west are too hard to predict and i shouldn't have bought it for this area.

I don’t think all tide watches are crap but the ATS Digital watches that Ripcurl are flogging haven’t been tested. My neighbor has a Citizen tide watch and it works perfectly.

The issue for me is they wasted my time. Why should we do the product testing for these guys. Are they surfers or are they surfshops? or perhaps surf tycoons.

i've had no problems with either tide time or height. i have to say it has been spot on for 12 months. the only time i got the tides wrong were the times i forgot to wear the watch

is this the model you are talking about?

the dark background display is my only gripe + it is one seriously heavy watch sink to the bottom left arm first when you fall in

I too have an analogue Ripcurl, and this is my second after wearing the bezzle out from over use for my original. For the tides in Karratha surfing. windsurfing and boating was tidal critical - 2 significant tides a day and it was spot on, but you had to set it correctly. I always set it following a battery change or on replacement by the new full moon. I had access to the local port tidal charts and kept a pretty close eye on it.

I think the secret is to set it up correctly for the analogue. I can't imagine a digital watch being less accurate ... bloody hell, confusers run the algorithm for tides globally, so how hard could it be for chip in a watch!!!!!.

A couple of our guys have the full blown ATS digital version. No probs with tides, heights or dates... all spot on.
One recently completed a mammoth journey across 4 states that included Gnaraloo. He tells us the pre programed tide guide worked perfectly. All were pre programmed except for Gnaraloo where he had to adjust by a number of minutes to the nearest mark. All pretty easy and worked a treat.

They tells us it helped doing an R.T.F.M

Read The F@#$ing Manual

Anyway thanks for the feedback.

Cheers.