Tides · Buoys · Marine advisories

A weather oracle in your pocket.

Every tide, every buoy, every Small Craft Advisory on the U.S. coast — read at a glance, from the same NOAA data the professionals use. Open it, read it, go.

Download on the App StoreBuilt for your water →

Free to use. No account. No tracking. No ads.

RipCat Today screen in dark mode: current tide 2.07 ft and falling, next low in 1h 58m, Solar Tide Dial for San Francisco (Golden Gate)
Current tide
2.07 ft
↓ Falling · San Francisco
Next low
10:51 AM
1.33 ft · in 1h 58m
Water temp
61 °F
Buoy 46053 · East Santa Barbara
Advisory
SCA until 2 PM
PZZ650 · seas 4–6 ft

Real readings from the screens on this page — captured live from the app.

NOAA tide predictionsNWS marine advisoriesNDBC live buoysThe same public sources marine professionals use

Marine timeline

The week's weather, on one map.

Small Craft Advisories aren't a wall of text in RipCat — they're a timeline you can scrub. Drag through the forecast and watch advisories sweep across the coast, zone by zone, from this morning to the weekend.

  • Zones painted on the chart — advisory areas glow where and when they're in effect.
  • Press play and let the week run like a weather-desk loop.
  • Buoy chips live on the same map — water temp and seas next to every zone.
RipCat marine map with the Small Craft Advisory timeline scrubbed to Tomorrow AM, buoy water-temp chips and zone labels across the Santa Barbara Channel

Buoy detail

Every buoy is a weather station. Now it reports to you.

Tap buoy 46053 off Santa Barbara and get the full briefing: swell height, direction, and period on a compass rose, wind and gusts, pressure and its trend, water, air, and dew point — plus the last twelve hours of wave history to see where it's headed.

  • Water temperature with a 7-day trend — know if it's been building before you drive.
  • Primary swell vs wind waves, separated, with period bars.
  • Rearrange the sections so your number is always on top.
RipCat buoy detail for NOAA buoy 46053: 3.3 ft swell hero numeral, swell rose, wind 4 kt gusting 6, 1015 mb, 61°F water, 12-hour wave history

At a glance

The whole forecast, before your coffee cools.

Tap a zone and the oracle lays it out: an outlook-by-day strip that flags every advisory window at a glance, then the full daily forecast — winds, seas, and wave detail in the National Weather Service's own words.

  • Outlook by day — morning, afternoon, evening chips for the whole week.
  • Severity you can see — coded by shape and color, labeled for VoiceOver.
  • Cached offline — the last briefing stays with you past the breakwater.
RipCat marine forecast for PZZ650, East Santa Barbara Channel: Small Craft Advisory banner, outlook-by-day strip, and daily forecast periods with winds and seas

Make it yours

Your units, your theme, your month on one page.

Feet or meters, 12 or 24-hour time, four chart themes from light to full nautical. And when you'd rather trust paper, print a tide calendar — a whole month of curves, highs, lows, and sun times, ink-friendly, for the fridge, the nav desk, or the tackle box.

  • Chart themes: Light, Dark, Coastal, Nautical.
  • High-tide alerts and a refresh cadence you control.
  • Tide calendars with sunrise, sunset, and every turn of the water.
RipCat settings in dark mode: RipCat Pro active, tide height units, 24-hour time, chart theme picker
RipCat tide calendar for Santa Barbara, July 2026: a mini tide curve and high/low times for every day, with sunrise and sunset

On iPad

The nav-desk view.

Full-width charts, the sidebar always at hand, and the whole Channel on one screen.

RipCat on iPad Pro: split-view with sidebar and the marine map showing buoy temperatures and advisory zones across the Santa Barbara Channel

iPad Pro 13″ — Map with the marine timeline, captured from the app.

Everywhere you look

A glance is only a glance if it's already there.

The oracle whispers from every surface you own — wrist, Lock Screen, Dynamic Island, menu bar.

Apple Watch

A standalone watch app with the tide curve and current height, plus complications for every slot. In the lineup, the answer is on your wrist.

RipCat on Apple Watch: Rincon Point tide sparkline, 2.4 ft and falling

Widgets, Live Activities & favorites

Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets, Dynamic Island countdowns to the next turn, Siri Shortcuts — and every spot you care about, one swipe apart.

RipCat favorites in dark mode: five California stations with current height and time to the next high or low
iPhone · iOS 17+iPadApple Watch · watchOS 10+Mac menu bar · macOS 14+Vision ProOpen-source CLI

Built for your water

One ocean, three tribes. RipCat speaks all of them.

The deep dive on what Pro does for the way you use the water:

Surfers

Know your tide before the set shows up. The window, the push, first light — on your wrist in the lineup.

Dawn patrol starts here →

Anglers

Fish the moving water. The swing, water temp on every buoy, and a dark UI built for the night bite.

Find the bite window →

Boaters

Tide, wind, and Small Craft Advisories on one screen — checked before the dock lines come off.

Read the harbor first →
Rip, a grey tabby cat in a navy Santa Barbara Surf Shop hoodie, standing next to a Randy Cone surfboard on the beach

The story

Made by ocean people. And one very unimpressed cat.

RipCat is built in Santa Barbara by Ben Williamson — a surfer and developer — with his daughter Odette and their cat Rip, a tabby who has seen bigger waves and is not impressed. (Kitten apprentice BlueJazz remains convinced the ocean is a giant water bowl.)

Rip's board is shaped by Randy Cone, who has been shaping Ben's boards for decades. The hoodie is from Santa Barbara Surf Shop — surfboards by Yater since 1962. Real shop, real shaper, real cat.

"Know the tide. Read the water. Go at the right time."

No venture money, no growth team, no dark patterns. Just an app the three of them actually use every morning — and keep making better.

Pricing

Honest, like a tide table.

The data is free. Pro puts it everywhere you glance.

RipCat

$0
free forever
  • Full NOAA tide predictions & charts
  • Station search, map & nearest station
  • Live buoys & marine advisories
  • Sun, moon & solunar times
  • 1 favorite station
Download free
Under $2 / month billed yearly

RipCat Pro

$19.99/year
or $2.99/month · cancel anytime
  • Unlimited favorite stations
  • Apple Watch complications
  • Lock Screen widgets
  • Share & export charts
  • Printable tide calendars
  • iCloud sync across devices
See why it's worth it →

Subscriptions are managed through the App Store. No account with us, ever.

All the data you need. In your pocket.

The tide isn't going to wait. Free on the App Store.

Download on the App Store