Must be related to "Wheels Up Wesh", who trashed an A-7 on 32L at NASL and ripped the tail and wings off a rolling gears up landing. He also grounded CVN65 Enterprise on a sand bar in Frisco Bay losing his command because he had the con at the time.
A grounding can ruin your whole day - particularly if you're the Skipper. I was sailing the south bay that day (in 1983) on the boat I lived aboard at the time. In the spirit of the "There's 2 kinds of pilots ...." saying we sailors had ours: "There's 2 kinds of sailors in SF Bay - those who have run aground ... and those who will run aground!"
The Big 'E' didn't 'hit a sand bar' so much as it simply didn't turn correctly into the dredged channel into Alameda NAS harbor. To my mind, that error belonged to the harbor pilot, though of course the skipper is ultimately responsible.
If I recall correctly from scuttlebutt at the time, what really did the skipper in was damage incurred in attmpting to get the carrier out of the mud.
$hit happens!