How to predict tides?

[lefty]

Hi gang
I'm still trying to get the hang of predicting tides if you're not smack on top of one of the measuring stations. Can y'all tell me if I'm on the right track?

In particular -- I'm looking at The Basin area at Ft. Fisher -- CFK is doing the last of their tournament series this weekend. So I found http://tbone.biol.sc.edu/tide/sites_useastlower.html and went looking for the lower cape fear area. From the maps, it looks like the Reaves Pt. station is a little north of Ft. FIsher and Southport is a little south. So I figure I check those two spots and expect to be somewhere between the two, right?

If I read correctly, on saturday, that page estimates hi tide, 4.5 ft above "normal" at 9:10am at Southport, and 4.25 ft at 9:24am at Reaves Pt. So Ft Fisher will probably peak in excess of 4 ft sometime between those two times (which I think is close enough for me). Right?

Now back to the general concepts -- both of those reporting stations seem to be along the river. I'd expect that moving from the river to the ocean side, you'd probably get the tidal crests a little bit earlier. Is that generally correct? Also I'd expect the mouth of the river to crest before a location upstream. And since The Basin area is behind a barrier island, I expect it to behave more like the river than the ocean. Right?

lefty