Do ship prefer to dock in high or low tides?
If there are no bridges in its path, a ship entering the bay to dock or leaving the bay would probably prefer to do so at or near the time or (high or low) tides?
Answers & Comments
Verified answer
Texas' answer is the true traditional answer.
However, modern ships in modern ports time their arrrival very exactly to when the tide will have risen enough to let them enter. They don't wait for high water. And when I say they calculate very exactly, the port demands that they have a margin for errror of no less than 30 cm (in a depth of maybe 40 m). This applies to ships like the Emma Maersk, 400 yards long, 171,000 gross tonnage, needs 18 m of water.
The reason for this accuracy is of course that time is money - the faster a ship loads and unloads, the less time it spends in port, the more profit it earns.
All else equal, high tide is the preferred time to set sail or come into dock.
When the tide is high and the water is deep there is less chance to run aground on anything.