...at the outset would have been the simplest way to have saved themselves a lot of grief... (grin)

One of the most experienced offshore race navigators posting over on Sailing Anarchy made a pretty cogent comment early on... He said if he were navigating a race on a boat for the first time, and made the request of the rest of the crew that they consistently "double check" his navigation throughout the course of the race, he would fully expect never to be invited back aboard again... I expect he's right...

As stated clearly by the investigators, the primary cause of this grounding is so obvious as to sound laughable... Quite simply, they were "unaware of the existence of" the reefs and islands that comprise the Cargados Carajos Shoals. That was an oversight made in the initial planning of the passage, rather than a failure made somewhere along the line...

I think it was Jeremy, in one of the earlier threads, who said the reason people generally don't run into places like Bermuda, is because they are aware that it exists (grin) Likewise, once clear of Rhode Island Sound on a passage from Newport to Bermuda, crews don't habitually zoom in their plotters and fly the route in greater detail, because they are reasonably confident there's no danger that will be revealed at a higher level of zoom, until they're approaching the reefs north of the island...

The crew on VESTAS had been assured by the navigator there was likewise nothing there, other than the same sort of "seamount" they had passed over earlier, north of Mauritius... They obviously believed that, confirmed by their peering off into the darkness when getting the first hint of seas breaking on the reef, and their apparent reluctance to process what it was they were seeing... What's really mystifying at that point, especially with the skipper himself being one of those peering into the darkness, that no one thought to have a closer look at one of the chartplotters to confirm their belief there was, indeed, nothing out there...