There are many instances when just being able to hold the bow into the current (or wind/waves) can save your bacon. I've heard all kinds of horror stories of boats being rolled in Dodds Narrows (and it's ilk) when they no longer had enough power to maintain steerage or (gulp) tried to turn and run with the current.

...And then there are the times when wind/waves and CURRENT conspire.

As a case in point, I put our boat up on a reef in the Bahamas a while back. We were negotiating a narrow pass where I knew exactly what the (beam) current would be, and thought I had everything figured. We were doing well ...until a squall came up out of no where (right on the beam) and added to the mix. Despite our best efforts we were swept up on the reef. We spent the next six hours in the dark, pounding a new nest in the coral. I had a lot of time to think that night before she drug herself off into 300' the next morning with the tide. The truth was there was nothing I could have done differently once we were in the melee. (I think Tom Y has been up on that same reef and knows whereof I speak ).