Ummm... Paul, from what you say, you are aware that during the Silurian and Devonian, when conquest of the land was in preparation or just beginning, the moon was a lot closer? Tides in those days were both more frequent and many, many times larger than we think in terms of today. Remember that tidal forces vary inversely with the fourth power of the distance! Think of the Severn bore and multiply it by a lot!
Washing away waste would be of little importance, and most of the animal fossils we find from those times were associated with swampy and pool conditions, often together with coal, which is hardly compatible with detritus being flushed out several times daily. Granted, there would have been open-sea animals as well which would rarely have fossilised, and littoral areas that might have been populated without leaving fossils, but really, to assume that those would be the best beachheads for the assaults seems too daring for me.
I accept that one could make a case for such conditions promoting the conquest of land, but for my part I suspect that it was more of a (lethal) obstacle and that the major advances were in shallow lakes and lagoons protected by waterweeds and later by reed-like growths, rather than directly from the really brutal littoral sea of the day.
Not that I was there at the time, mind; this is just an opinion. :-)
Jon