Yes, I know this thread is getting long, but I have one last thing for dxb on this subject.
I was in the library today anyway and went to look at that book. It is basically a review of the scientific work in estuaries up to that date (already more than 25 years ago). I read the bit on the Solent, etc., and found it wasn't very helpful.
I asked my supervisor what he thought and we looked at a map and worked it out. The Kelvin waves in the NH, as I said, travel with the coast at their right. If the English Channel is about 100 m deep, the the velocity of the Kelvin waves is about 100 km/h. If you look at a map and picture the tide propagating, first along the north coast of France from west to east. Then since the Channel near Dover is so narrow, the Kelvin wave "sees it" as closed altogether, and instead continues along the south coast of England, in an east-west direction. The distance between the closest point near the Isle of Wight and Cherbourg, France, if you measure along the coastline, is such that it takes about three hours for the tide to work its way around there (i. e. ~300 km). So if, say, it is high tide at Poole, the tide is on its way out at Cherbourg, and though they are some distance apart it is not so far that the tide going out at Cherbourg is "unnoticed" by the water at Poole. There are also probably strong topographical effects as well, and what you get is the tide "meeting itself" in the region between the Solent and Poole Harbour.
Whew! What an odyssey. If you have any more questions, do PM me (and don't forget to turn your PMs on in that case). (I think others may not be as interested in this discussion as we are!)
