Hi CCA,

At the press conference, he actually claimed January was the BEST time to do that trip... Or, at least, that's what someone had told them... it had something to do with hurricane season in the Pacific, but then he sort of jokingly admits that was probably wrong, implying he was under the impression that what they had experienced was, indeed, a hurricane... I've seen a general consensus elsewhere that this year, in particular, would have been a bad year for a January passage, the track for the passage of all those North Pacific lows has apparently dropped much further south than usual...

Sounds like they had numerous problems with the boat right from the start of the trip... He admitted "if you look at it, it wasn't much of a boat. But, it DID have an awesome navigational system..."

Oh, and a satellite phone... That was their Plan B, a sat phone...

I think what primarily informs my take on this one, was the presence of the young boy aboard... If two adults want to go to sea so ill-prepared, fine... I have no problem with that, other than how the effects of such stupidity will eventually trickle down to affect the rest of us, and of course the unnecessary risk and costs posed to rescuers. But, hey, I do plenty of singlehanded sailing, which many view as equally risky and irresponsible, so who am I to point fingers? (grin)

But, that young boy aboard makes this a whole different ballgame, IMHO. Last fall I took a Valiant 42 to the islands, with my brother and youngest nephew as crew... The boat was superbly prepared for such a trip, I couldn't have asked for better. But, as the time drew nearer to departure, I was frankly surprised by the amount of stress I began to feel about the whole endeavor, whether I had done enough in prep, and so on... The weight of the responsibility became crushing, I really began to have second thoughts, wondering whether I'd made a mistake. Mind you, my nephew is 25 years old, a professional ski patroller/avalanche controller at Mammoth in the winter, and a firefighter for the Forest Service in the Sierras during the summer, not to mention a very capable sailor, having done a fair amount of racing on SF Bay... Hell, this trip was likely to be the safest thing he'd done in a couple of years...LOL! Of course, a couple of days into the trip, I was pretty much at ease. Still, when Herb Hilgenberg started talking about the formation of another tropical low after Sean, it was a no-brainer that we'd divert to Bermuda to wait and see what happened. Had I been alone, however, I probably would have continued straight on to Antigua...

best regards,

Jon