Not long after I bought my 30' Searay Weekender I was pumped to take it out. Had the wife our friends, all seemed great. We headed south out of the narrows in Clearwater, Fl. Was gonna go to Tampa Bay and go see some more friends at the St. Pete Marina. Did real good staying in the channel, draw bridges, other boaters, till I got down to the end of Saint Petersburg. The channel went way out and around. I looked at the maps I had, depth sounder. Hmm, I can cut this corner no prob. Map sayes 8 ft, my boat drafts almost 4 ft. Great!! We can make it ahead of schedule!!! So I throttle to about 20 knots, go flying of the channel, well i get about half way across the corner I was cutting across and happen top look over the side of the boat. OH ****, I can see the bottom!!! And in Tampa Bay that is unusual. I immediately throttle back. The wake picks the boat up and drops it down on a shoal, kills both engines, and I sit there thinking "What now?" We were at a slack low tide, so we could wait a few hours, so we did. At which time I found out the "Low water alarm" on the depth sounder wasnt working. After about 4 hours of listening to my wife, I decieded that was enough time!!! I got the engines started, and just bumped it in rev.. It worked!! Reverse raised the back end up just enough to keep the rudders and props from hitting. I backed up the boat till I felt I could turn it around in deep enough water. Luckily I had a GPS Map, so I followed it exactly till I got back to the channel. I learned a valuable lesson that day. I was scared that I might have done damage to the bottom of the boat so I had it pulled and ended up having the bottom repainted because of the scrapped paint. So from then on I always kept it in the channel. That was 7 years ago, It took me that long to be able to talk about it thank to this board. 
