I had an unpleasant experience with a "sinusoidal" tide. My brother forgot to mention he had used up all the shear pins that protected outboard motor when propeller got tangled in seaweed. My father and I were half a mile down the channel from the mooring place when some weed caused pin to shear, and we found there was no spare pin. I elected to swim back up the channel to the skiff at our mooring place. When I started, the tide was high, but halfway to my goal, it started to turn, and picked up speed quite rapidly, until I was going back down the channel. I had to swim to channel bank, and walk through horrible ooze filled with sharp broken sheel that cut my bare feet. If I had plotted my progress during the swim it would have made a sort of sinusoidal curve, I now recognize.
One of the most spectacular tides in the world is the one in the Bay of Fundy, which in spring can reach forty feet. Alas the few times I was able to visit the Tidal Bore it was comparatively tame. There is a rather long list of terms used to describe tides, too long, and too easy to forget to be worth posting.
