who can comment on this forum is an 'armchair sailor' regardless of their actual offshore experience for the purposes of my comments. It's not to disparage anyone, but rather to make the point that while we are warm and comfy and able to reach for another cup of coffee, our decision making will be considerably different from that of someone who's wife just went up the ladder, is bouning around in the slop and getting banged hard a couple times a minute by a great big iron behemoth and has ten people up on deck telling him to hurry up because the ship can't maintain its position alongside much longer....

Me? I'm outta there. My boat isn't the only trash on the oceans for someone to hit and the odds are pretty low anyway. Ideally? Yup, it'd be pretty swell to have everyone who abandons their boat at sea to be so courteous as to sink it so I don't have to worry about it. Most aren't that 'wonderful'. I confess, I probably wouldn't be either.