Hey Dan,

Having survived a lifetime of being serially guilty of both, I think it's important to make the distinction between "stupidity", and "ignorance"... I seriously doubt the skipper of RULE 62 is a stupid individual - I think the greater likelihood is that he was profoundly ignorant of the situation he was facing that night, and that ignorance was simply the result of inexperience. As I've said earlier or elsewhere, it's apparent to me he had never run an inlet or Bahamian cut in anything remotely close to the conditions he faced that night before... If he had, he would have known such an approach was nuts... Same thing regarding the tactic of heaving-to, I can only assume he was completely ignorant of the benefits of doing so, having never tried it before...

This sort of thing was bound to happen sooner or later, in connection with an event like the Caribbean 1500... Too many people with relatively little offshore experience lured by this promise:

"First-time passagemakers, we want to enable you to make your first long offshore passage safe, comfortable, and fun ... without unnecessary surprises" (carib1500.com)

I still blame it all on GPS... In the old days, you had to know how to navigate before venturing out to a destination as far-flung as the Eastern Caribbean, or at least have someone aboard with the skills to be able to find the BVIs - now, of course, anyone can do it... The traditional means of learning voyaging skills by taking baby steps is a distant memory, and coupled with the vast amounts of disposable income and leisure time available to many today, the trend towards 40+ footers as First Boats, etc - it all results in a sort of Perfect Storm of ignorance/lack of experience which virtually assures something like this will happen from time to time...

Another factor which I've touched upon elsewhere, I'll bet over-reliance/dependence upon electronic charting played a huge role in this incident... Not only in giving a false confidence regarding the accuracy of waypoints in the cut, etc, but also in making it more difficult to see the Big Picture in strategic terms... This is just my hunch, of course, but I'd venture that this guy was likely relying solely on electronic/computer navigation on his approach to the Bahamas... IMHO, there is no substitute for a large paper chart spread out in front of you for assessing your options, this in one area in which electronic charting is very weak for planning purposes, it's extremely difficult to grasp the bigger picture... The need for endless zooming/panning on a computer or plotter screen to obtain the same information that can be gleaned at a glance from a paper chart can really cloud the decision-making process, especially when you're being forced to consider an alternative plan, and then factor exhaustion into the equation... The greatest mystery to be about this whole deal, is why he didn't appreciate how much safer the option to continue sailing just a bit further south to places like Sandy Point or Spanish Wells would have been, and I've got to believe such options might have been so much clearer to him had he had the proper scale paper chart spread out before him, and the luxury of studying it repeatedly at his leisure...

When I think back about some of the things I did when I was first starting out, I'm often stunned at my own ignorance at the time, and realize that I am indeed lucky to be alive... But I was very fortunate to have learned from sailing as crew with people far more experienced than I, and was always reluctant to undertake a voyage until I felt ready to do so on my own... That will always be the great fallacy inherent in the Rally/Safety in Numbers concept - if you don't feel ready to set out for Tortola on your own, you're not ready, period...

best regards,

Jon