Nope, I'm not going to do the worship business here. I'll accept 100%
your account of the incident except for the implied analysis.

So you diverted 480 nm to get to this sailboat. Now what would you have
done using that fuel and time if not for this diversion? Oh, yeah, also
you hung around until the weather calmed.

So we have a diversion of about 500 nm, then a delay while you waited
the weather out. Let me ask you, if the sailboat was in such dire
distress, why could it survive the storm? Why do you say that the family
would have been in mourning if you didn't pull the guy out when the
storm passed? You mean, he and the boat could survive heavy weather but
not calm weather?

More to the point, is your existence in standard patrol or whatever you
were on when you 'diverted' the 500 nm useless? Do you serve no function
at all except to aimlessly cruise around in your cutter just waiting for
some clown to falsely claim being in distress so you can zoon 500 nm to
make some headlines and get good press?

So now tell me, what didn't get done while you were out watching this
sailboat bounce around in demonstrably safe conditions? I say safe
because it DID make it through didn't it? So the safety isn't
speculative, but demonstrated.