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I agree with Steffen, but here's another way of thinking about it is this.
The earth rotates much faster (once a day) than the moon orbits (once a month). This means you can think about it as the moon just being stationary while the earth rotates. So, we have a tidal bulge that is stationary while the earth rotates under it.
Now the oceans are disrupted by the continents. Think about the Americas particularly, running north to south between the poles. As the earth rotates under the tidal bulge, they act as a big vane pushing the water forward (like the inside of a washing machine). The result is that the bulge (ie high tide) is well ahead of where you'd expect it.
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