Was the character looking at the bay and making the comment a native speaker of the language? Something like that makes it sound like he's a foreigner who is dealing with the idiosyncrasies of a second language.

(That would be my argument for not doing that. It implies things about the character that aren't entirely true. And, unless the character is a foreigner or a linguistic scholar, is more the author inserting their own voice into the character. And that should generally be avoided whenever possible.)