Larry: I do not know anything about boats. Don't know what the middle ground is but it must be quite a rip to make you wary cause you seem to really know what you are doing. When I lived in CT a friend used to take me fishing in his boat to the rips off of Watch Hill and the rocky shoreline of Fishers Island. I was glad he knew what he was doing. We used to launch out of Westerly, R.I. One night it got so foggy so quickly that that we could not go home. Found a safe place in Stonington, CT Harbor and spent the night.