heure légale Brest

19:59 May 16, 2010 

Yes for French standard time :

http://www.btinternet.com/~keith.bater/time_zones_rya.htm

And not as I had suggested altering it to standard French time.

19:51 May 16, 2010 

Hi everybody, sorry to enter the discussion a little late.
Graham is right. If I am sailing around Brest and need to know at which time the tide will be low/high, I just have to look at a timetable giving me the "horaires des marées - heure légale Brest", this will give me the time for low/high tide in Brest, and the time will be indicated in the standard French time without any conversion needed. Some tide timetables, including the Almanach du marin breton, used to give the tide times in CUT and some in French standard time, and it was a source of confusion. Now, they are all given in "heure légale", i.e. the "official" time for France.
As a native speaker of French who happened to sail once or twice in the "pointe de Bretagne" there is no doubt in my mind.

09:37 May 11, 2010 

Fair enough, Graham, if you're sure...

Regarding the timetable: I assume that once the offset has been given, people are supposed simply to refer to the tide-tables for Brest.

09:35 May 11, 2010 

No, in the context of tidetables I am sure that "heure légale" means that all the times given for high/low tides are in normal French time (and not GMT, the other option), in English you'd see something like HT 0235 GMT or HT 0235 BST depending on the time of the year.

09:27 May 11, 2010 

It's quite simple really: there is a tide every day; the dates given in your table are therefore the dates for the spring tides; all the other days will have 'ordinary' (i.e. neap) tides. This should make logical sense with the dates you have (I hope!); given that neaps and springs depend on the position of the moon...

09:26 May 11, 2010 

perhaps they will add a timetable to it later?

09:23 May 11, 2010 

Nikki, Gilla and Graham!
There certainly is a lot of information here, and, to be honest, I don't think any of the answers provided so far are in fact wrong! There seem to be so many possibilities for expressing the times of Spring Tides. Although, funnily enough, this heading is for a table/calendar of dates and not times, despite the "heure légale".
And they don't supply an equivalent table for the Neap Tides...

08:50 May 11, 2010 

let's be clear about one important point:

In French tidetables the times of high tide are given in French Standard Time (which is also CET) and may or may not be adjusted for summer time.

07:47 May 11, 2010 

I keep by my bed (I live surrounded by the sea on three sides in West Cornwall) and our local tides times are given in relation to Newquay some way up the north coast. It states on the first page "Tidal predictions are based on Newquay." and there is a table giving plus or minus times all around the coast. Penzance, where I live, is -20 high water and -13 low water. There is no word used in equivalence to légale here, such as official. We simply say Newquay time.

23:02 May 10, 2010 

that is of course of importance. Time and tide waiting for no man, the "heure légale" in fact means that no adjustment is to be made for the fact that Brest is in reality in a slightly different time zone from Toulon for example. The "heure légale" is the official standard French time, no adjustment to be made.
Where I live, in La Trinité sur Mer, we calculate tide times here in relation to one of two ports which appear in the official tide tables, la Trinité does not.
Brest in your context is the reference port, so I agree, official time (Brest).

19:55 May 10, 2010 

Tide times are only defined for a few key points around the coast; other more local times are usually extrapolated on the basis of so many hours / mins before / after the nearest reference point.

I was born and brought up on a boat, and tide times were always a major preoccupation for us; almost as soon as I could read, my Dad gave me the job of being 'tide-table monitor' and keeping the family duly informed of the local tides — which in Poole are particularly complicated, as there are in fact 2 tides per day (1st and 2nd high-water, with a 'stand' in between where the tide doesn't go right out again)

19:55 May 10, 2010 

I must stress that the list that follows is a table of dates, between April and November, and not a list of times of high and low tide . It goes on in the next para to explain that this particular place is 10 minutes behind Brest regarding tide times.

I hope this isn't confusing the issue!

19:46 May 10, 2010 

This makes sense! The local tide times seem to be based on times of high tides (or Spring Tides, in this case) in Brest, and seem to be expressed in terms of "1 hr BEFORE HW Brest" and "3 hrs AFTER HW Brest". I don't know if that has any bearing on this term...

19:41 May 10, 2010 

Yes, this is the same (rather large) text. Being a guide for the whole area, it covers just about every tourism-related aspect. But it's mainly the fishing and nautical terms that I find the most difficult, so I can understand anyone thinking this was a fishing-oriented text! I also did a shorter one very recently for their neighbours, with several nautical terms - and a few KudoZ questions... But I have no plans to specialise in that department, but tourism covers a multitude of sins - most of which is pretty enjoyable.. :)
Interesting para on "heure légale" in your link - thanks!

19:32 May 10, 2010 

That was really fast!

19:10 May 10, 2010 

Are you still on your fishing text? If so, this ref might be interesting:
http://www.alamouche.com/editos/heures-peche.html