Greetings, Happy New Year!! - how did you get on with the Christmas Day question?
Did you book a table - Yes I did.
If you went to the effort of doing what I was thinking, I wonder what you wrote? Here are the answers I came up with.
What does backing mean? Wind direction moving anti clockwise
What wave height would you anticipate with a smooth, slight and moderate sea states?
Smooth Wave height less than 0.5
Slight Wave height 0.5 - 1.25m
Moderate Wave height 1.25 - 2.5m
What time would you anticipate showers - Later means 12 to 24 hrs so the earliest it may rain would be 1200.
The route you have decided on takes you over an area with a drying height of 4.5m at around 2030. Your vessel has a draught of 2.2m. What will your clearance be over the drying height when you arrive at that point?
This is straight forward once you have broken it down to what you need to know
LW 1653 0.3m HW 2332 13.6m Range 13.3m
Barometric pressure expected to be 1038 by 1800, we know tidal information is based on a barometric pressure of 1013 and for every millibar above or below it is + or - 1 cm. 1038 - 1013 = 25cm
I used a tidal clock for this exercise, I have a preference for the % rule as opposed to the rule of 12th’s (my 12 times table is rubbish but I can do percentages real quick).
Looking at the tidal clock above, you can see that at 2030 there will be 6.71m corrected for the barometric pressure.
Subtract 4.5m for drying height and a further 2.2m for your draught gives you -0.01m, you are going to have to wait or adjust your arrival time. If you did not correct for barometric pressure you might have 6.96 - 4.5 - 2.2 = 0.26m and if there had been no swell and you were sure the bar had not changed since your chart was updated, you might have chanced the crossing, personally I'd prefer to wait for 1m clearance.
When thinking about visibility, what does moderate mean? Between 2 and 5 nautical miles
If you managed to cover all that - well done! I applaud your enthusiasm. Have great day.