First off, I'm truly sorry for your loss, but I'm glad to see that there was no loss of life. When conditions start exceeding comfort level it's easy to want to step onto dry land.

I still remember rounding Cape Fear in 35kt growing winds on the nose and seas building to 12ft+ with periods of half the height. We decided to duck into the Cape Fear River. We had radar and a chartplotter but we prefer visual verification of buoys. The waves were so high and steep that we couldn't count all of the flashes before we were in another trough. We were downwind with the seas following us heavily, a wind against current situation as we entered the ebbing river creating massive standing waves, and I could barely hold our course.

So, I did the stupidest thing ever - I plotted a course on the chartplotter and slaved the autopilot to it and held on for dear life. Our kids popped their heads up at one point to let us know that it was like a tornado hit the interior - everything was on the floor from being tossed about, and our laptop was down there too having been thrown off its mount (it was only being used for backup navigation with Coastal Explorer).

We made it into the river but we could have easily holed our boat on shoals, buoys, etc. A radar isn't overly accurate when it's not stabilized and you're being thrown around like mad. Entering the inlet at night, in heavy winds, in heavy seas, with limited visibility, with kids on board, with difficulty manually steering due to the pressures, with an unstabilized radar picture - well, not bright. But all we could think about is that we wanted to be on the hook or tied up in nice calm seas.

We fortunately made it, but it could have gone either way, and I completely understand what was going through your head.