Listen, I'm writing a novel and my character is in a tidal wave when something sinkable tangles onto him and he sinks, what should it be?

A fishing net.

A rope or cable attached to an anchor or another heavy object.

A sheet or a sail that was wrapped around him.

I think the wave would've forced him under the water long enough to drown him. He would have been battered by it as well.

Why not look at videos of tsunamis and use your imagination?  Have you been thrown off a surfboard or out of a boat or canoe into rough water?  Recollect the sensations of the first time that happened to you.

a stray fishing net

Jerald, you're wearing out your welcome here. You need to do real research, not ask people at Yahoo Answers.

You cannot do adequate research from the comfort of your chair, although you're clearly falling short even there. (Seek news footage and documentaries about tsunamis, for starters.) You need to read survivors' and first responders' accounts of tsunamis, hurricane storm surges, and sudden floods.

I'm not even researching this and I seem to know more than you do about the subject of your book. So get busy.

Listen, my advice is to have the character sink by having something sinkable tangling onto him after which he drowns. All, preferably, in the first page so that it ends up being a very, very short story. That way you'll save yourself a whole heap of trouble and help the world become a better place by not filling it up with even more cr@p. Hope this helped.

Use the roaring tumbling water itself ....why add another character into the story....

Listen, you're about as capable of writing a novel as you are capable of drinking the Caspian Sea through a crazy straw in one sip. Go away. If you can't think up your own ideas, what makes you think you might be able to write a novel? I'm sure there's something on television that will hold your interest. Go and see. This forum doesn't exist so that unimaginative, lazy dolts can have somewhere to go to solicit ideas for their rubbish stories.