Lamu Town tide times

Predictions: Open-Meteo Marine (MeteoFrance SMOC, 0.08° grid) — heights relative to MSL (not chart datum / LAT). Model-derived.

Model-derived from a global ocean grid. Useful indication; expect about ±45 minutes on average vs. a local harmonic gauge, individual stations vary widely. See /methodology for per-region detail. Not for navigation.

Conditions as of 01:00 local time. Refreshes daily.

Predictions: Open-Meteo Marine (MeteoFrance SMOC, 0.08° grid) — heights relative to MSL (not chart datum / LAT). Model-derived. · Not for navigation.

The angler tradition for major/minor fishing windows: major ≈3-hour windows around moon transit and opposition; minor ≈2-hour windows around moonrise and moonset. Times are Africa/Nairobi local. Folk tradition, not a scientific forecast.

Next spring tide on Fri 08 May (range 1.5m). Next neap on Sat 09 May.

Spring tides cluster around new and full moons (biggest swings). Neap tides land on quarter moons (smallest swings). See the spring tide and neap tide glossary entries for the why.

Lamu Town sits on the western coast of Lamu Island, facing the Lamu Channel — the 600-metre waterway that separates Lamu from Manda Island to the north. The town has been continuously inhabited since at least the 14th century and the built fabric of the old town is intact in a way that is unusual anywhere in the world: coral stone buildings of three and four storeys, carved wooden doors, inner courtyards open to the sky, and lanes too narrow for a vehicle. No motorised vehicles are permitted on the island except one government tractor; donkeys carry freight and people. The town was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2001. The Lamu Waterfront — the seafront promenade running the length of the old town, from the Fort and the Lamu Museum at the south to the dhow harbour at the north — runs directly on the tidal channel. The channel is active throughout the day with dhow traffic, inter-island ferry crossings (Lamu–Manda–Shela), and local fishing boats. Tidal current direction reverses with each tidal phase: on the ebb, the channel current runs westward toward the open sea beyond Manda Bay; on the flood, it reverses and runs eastward into the deeper parts of the archipelago. At spring tides, this current reaches 2 to 3 knots in the narrower sections of the channel — fast enough that the dhow captains time their departures to the tidal phase rather than to a fixed clock schedule. The spring tidal range at Lamu is approximately 3.0 metres; neap range around 1.5 metres. The tidal cycle here has the same semidiurnal character with diurnal inequality as the rest of the Kenyan coast. The Lamu Channel between the town waterfront and Manda Island experiences some of the strongest tidal currents in the Kenyan archipelago due to the channel geometry — narrow and moderately deep, with both ends opening to the larger tidal body of the archipelago. At peak spring ebb, the current against the mangrove fringe of the Manda Island shore visible from the waterfront is visible as a standing wake: the water piles against the mangrove roots and the surface is rough even in calm wind conditions. The dhow harbour in front of the Fort and the Old District at the southern end of the waterfront is the operational centre of Lamu's maritime activity. Traditional jahazi ocean dhows and the smaller dau dhows are moored at the deep-water end of the harbour at high water; at spring low water, many of the smaller vessels ground out on the mud in front of the old warehouses and the harbour effectively becomes a tidal flat. This is when maintenance work happens: caulking the planks, painting the below-waterline hull sections, clearing marine growth. The cycle repeats with each spring tide. For visitors, the waterfront at any tidal state is the centre of Lamu Town activity — the afternoon promenade from the museum to the dhow harbour is the town's main social artery. The best light for photography of the dhows falls in the late afternoon from roughly 16:30 onward, when the low sun catches the lateen sails of any dhows still moving on the channel. At the largest spring low tides, the mud flat in front of the Fort exposes widely and the grounded dhows create a photographic composition that is specific to the spring low-water condition — available for roughly 2 hours centred on the low water time shown on this page. The inter-island water taxi to Shela (3 kilometres south on the waterfront track or a 15-minute boat ride) departs from the main Lamu jetty throughout the day; at very low spring water, the boat may take a longer route around the exposed sandbar rather than the direct channel crossing. The trip to Shela Beach, the 12-kilometre undeveloped beach south of the Shela settlement, requires a boat or a 45-minute walk on the inland track from Lamu Town. Tide predictions for Lamu Town come from Open-Meteo Marine, a gridded global ocean model. Accuracy is typically plus or minus 45 minutes on timing and 0.2 to 0.3 metres on height. The complex multi-channel tidal hydrography of the Lamu Archipelago means that local timing offsets and current patterns can exceed the model's baseline accuracy; treat these predictions as planning guidance. KMFRI (Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute) at Mombasa is the regional oceanographic reference. These predictions are not for navigation.