To get out of the bay and into the Gulf, you have to sail through the Matagorda channel and jetties. Its a narrow channel that all of the bay water has to flow through when the tide changes. We were sailing out the channel as the tide was going out. So that's OK, but the wind was blowing against the tidal currrent, which is bad... So we had eight foot standing waves that we had to sail through. Pam steered though it, with the bow plunging below the surface of the water after the boat rolled down off the top of each wave. Really exciting... Then when we exited the channel, the waves were still really huge, but now coming from random directions. We were worried the gulf would stay that way, but it soon settled down to 3-4 foot waves.