Tide tables for research

A tide table is not motivational. It is a list of when the water will actually be there. Research has the same physics: some hours you can issue a harbor; some hours you can only sound.

Flood and ebb

Flood: new sources, new keepers, a week when the room will read. Ebb: everyone is at a conference, the archive is closed, the only available number is last year’s. Meridian will let you write on the ebb. It will mark the plate as ebb. That mark is the product.

Calendars are not water

A sprint named “ship the brief” does not raise the tide. If the soundings are still two fathoms, the cartouche should say so. We have killed more good work by pretending the water was in than by waiting until Thursday.

How to post a table

Keep a public sheet: next issue window, who is on watch, what weather is due. If you cannot fill it, you do not have a chartroom. You have a hope.