The timing of slack water on the night of June 11-12, 1962, is what the Delft study was trying to establish. The researchers used historical tide tables and current records for that specific date to reconstruct the actual hydrodynamic conditions. Their finding — that a launch after 9:00 PM and before approximately 3:00 AM could have produced a survivable trajectory toward Angel Island or the Marin shoreline — is based on that reconstruction.
The northeastern shore of Alcatraz, near the power plant, is where Allen West placed the launch point. It faces approximately toward Angel Island. A raft leaving that shore on the right phase of the tide, with active paddling, could ride the current northward rather than be swept westward through the Golden Gate. The window was real. It was also narrow, and it required either knowledge of or luck regarding the timing.
Morris’s access to published information — the *Popular Mechanics* article, the *Sports Illustrated* channel buoy piece — suggests attention to technical details that could have extended to current timing. Whether the escape timing was deliberately chosen to coincide with favorable tide conditions or whether it was determined by the state of the men’s preparations and the need to act before the concealment deteriorated further is not documented in any primary source.
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## Alcatraz as a System: Security, Complacency, and Failure
The June 1962 escape can be read as a document of institutional failure — not through dramatic incompetence but through the ordinary mechanisms by which security systems degrade over time.