SNOW Cut Exit - Should’ve known with a name like snow!

Approach to and through Snow Cut from Wrightsville Beach area thornier than a porcupine with currents pushing Prudence 90 degrees off course even at full throttle. Luckily, several boats earlier in the day ran aground and alerted us to extensive shoaling encroaching past markers into the channel. So, at least, we knew to try and avoid those sandbars while surfing Prudence through currents like a swimmer in a riptide.

Entered Snow Cut with currents pushing Prudence from port to starboard right beneath the bridge. Exited Snow Cut without any issues and feeling pretty darn confident about my “captainshipabilities” (Mandy). No worries even as we approach Cape Fear. Fearlessly, I approach the channel from the northwest as indicated in our guidebook, depths start decreasing 10, 6, 5, oh - s---. We draw 4’ 11” seeing 5’ just ain’t no good.

Port. Starboard. No depth anywhere! 3.8’ problem solved. Stopped dead and tipped slightly to port. SOP (standard operating procedure) initialized immediately. Throttle ALL the way down. Neutral. Reverse. Throttle all the way up. BUMP. BUMP. BUMP with wake and current. 3.8’ still. Called Tow Boat U.S. What will we be thankful for this Thanksgiving? Buying the unlimited tow package.

In the meantime, huge wakes came by thanks to the rude people driving powerboats that just seem to lack common sense when it comes to being considerate of other boaters around them. Despite alerting approaching boats about our situation and requesting little to no wake, these motorboats kept creating wake and making our boat slam further into the sand bar floor.

This behavior just confirms my dislike of people who drive motorboats like they’re in a racecar. I put a hex on them as of today. May they all run out of gas and have to stay put while all their onboard accoutrements begin to fail due to lack of power and all their frozen foods melt especially their meat - may it go rotten! As we sail by on free power!