[berettafan]

The worst in a rough inlet is going through with the current where you have little to no steering control. The only way to steer the boat is to grab a little throttle as needed. Sometimes more throttle than is safe given the waves you’re headed into. if you play that wrong, you can end up with a whole lot of hull not touching the water or scooping in a terrifying amount of green water. so what often happens is you line the boat up best you can and essentially are white water rafting until you get into slower current where you can get steering control back.

Narrow inlets typically have very large standing waves when the current is rushing in or out. if you combine that with the wakes from large sport fish boats coming and going, it gets very dangerous very fast. I remember going through our inlet one January day to chase the rockfish, and I read the wave wrong, next thing I knew I felt like I was pointing straight in the air and had to hold onto the wheel just to stay in the boat. And that brief moment, I was praying the boat didn’t come straight back down stern first and swamp, fortunately it did more of a bellyflop and I got through.

You also will see a fair amount of people that don’t understand the need to trim the motor up and keep the bow high in standing waves. Freshwater boats with down sloping bows have no business being in saltwater for this reason.