I've been trying to understand the thought process that would lead a highly experienced sailor into making the decisions that resulted in such a disaster. Certainly the size of the storm was under-estimated or the seaworthiness of the ship and crew was over-estimated, or both. I can understand his decision not to stay in Mystic and let the ship get beaten up if he felt it too exposed there, but as SG noted, why not go to Boston, or Nova Scotia. Having made the decision to go to sea, Claudene Christian's words are insightful when she told her parents "I'll probably be halfway to Europe before we get around it." Apparently they *planned* to get well to the east, but they clearly didn't go anywhere near far enough, and why not is the question. As I alluded to in my initial post: once they started to feel the effects of the NE quadrant, and started to get into trouble, they were basically screwed. By then it would have been too late to gain more easting ('they recognized that the ship was moving too slowly'). I don't have an easy way to pull up records of the winds during that period to figure out how far east he had to go, but presumably his strategy of sailing east around the storm would have worked had he not cut it so close. And once that mistake was made and he got into E and SE winds there wasn't much that could be done.

I'd still like to hear from a crew member or shore-side support as to the route they took; given the decision to sail around it to the east, why didn't they sail far enough. Maybe it was over confidence as alluded to in the TV interview you linked.

Cheers,(nl)Max