Checking wind speeds is relatively easy but I was wondering how do you check the low-tide times? Also i've heard people mention the "full-moon". What does the moon cycle have to do with buggying conditions, could someone catch me up on this?

-Rando

Full moon helps to see where your going.

but others can give you a more logical answer.

Randy, Try this site

http://www.saltwatertides.com/dynamic.dir/newjerseysites.htm...

check www.Protides.com
Tides are only a factor in kite bugging if you are at the beach.
Where do you ride?

Jaymz: that's a cool site, thanks!

Vwbrian: another great site (i saved both of these sites to my favorites). I ride at the beach so usually it's trickey getting the right wind conditions plus enough of the hard packed sand for my buggy to get rolling.

Bigfoot tires go along way to open up the soft sand to buggy's
What beach do you ride at?

Vwbrian: I may have to get some bf's like you said. So far i've been down to Seaside, Bradley, Asbury Park and Belmar beaches. Jaymz showed me a couple of other beaches though that have potential for days with different wind directions so I will likely be checking them out soon.

hey Randy what was Seaside like..? CobraKites does a fly every Wed. during the summer... :wee:

Cheezy: I haven't had a good session buggying there yet. That is the beach where I dunked my whole buggy in the ocean
:eekdrull:

But usually the winds are pretty whipping in Seaside. The only drawback is that the beach is real narrow. I went to one of Ray and Genie's fly sessions on the beach there. It was pretty cool but haven't been able to make it down for another one yet. :dunno:
Seaside is usually good for kite jumping cause it sometimes gets real good winds!!

When the moon is in line with the sun (from the point of view of the Earth) - and this happens at full moon and new moon - then their gravitational force is combined and results in a greater tide range. This is called a Spring Tide (has nothing to do with the season). When the moon is at 90 degrees to the track to the sun, the gravitational pull of the moon is not augmented and the tide range is not as great. This is a neap tide.

Low tide yields a larger beach and spring tide an even bigger beach. Due to the crescent shape of the southeast US coast and Georgia's position at the western-most point, (called the "Georgia Bight") we have up to a 9' tidal range here, so low tide yields a particularly big beach with hard-pack sand.

Here on the Atlantic shores we have a semidiurnal tide, meaning two high tides and two low tides a day. The lunar day is longer than our solar day by a little bit, so that each day, a given high or low tide is about 50 minutes later than the previous day.

Due to the effect of land shapes, placement, ocean sizes and other factors, the tidal cycles in the Gulf and the west coast are different and I am not as familiar with them.

More here....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide#Amplitude_and_cycle_time

The west coast varies, but typically low tides = big beach of hard pack. The moon correlates directly to the tides as you can learn from wikipedia, so you'll get extra low tides with a strong moon cycle. I look out a yer ahead to see when the negative tides are at 2pm because that gives maximum beach for all day buggying. Of course there's no guarntee of wind and here it happens only a few times a year.

thanks guys for the tidal web sites, have been looking for something like this for my local beach and see it's listed, awesome!

Ditto for what iluvgadgets said. This was great info :bigok: