"Roger Long" wrote:
Even the best found vessel and most experienced crew can come to grief.
That's the nature of the sea.

Yes it is.
Some people find "danger" alluring, although they probably don't have
the knowledge & experience to connect it with being cold & seasick for
days at a time. Where is the romance in that?

Also a HUGE number of cruisers & sailors have not seen & don't believe
in the ocean's tremendous power. I once read that a hurricane stores &
releases as much energy as a dozen atom bombs... a trite saying...
however I have seen North Sea waves rip steel fittings off a U.S. Navy
warship (actually I didn't see it, but I saw what was left on the main
deck when the storm cleared) and thought to myself "no small sailboat
ever built could possibly survive this." Yet many people will debate
"ultimate storm tactics" and talk about which crab-crusher is the MOST
seaworthy and discuss their ideas about the design/construction of an
"all-weather cruiser."


That article by a USCG rescue swimmer in "Yachting" I posted about a while
ago was interesting because of the point that one of these guys could go
through a whole career without rescuing someone who had deployed some kind
of drogue. I don't think the drogue itself is the reason. People who have
that kind of equipment will most likely have made the other physical and
psychological preparations to enable them to deal with severe weather.

Yep... they had knowledge & skills as well as equipment and a properly
prepared boat.


There will always be exceptions on both ends of the spectrum but the
majority of chopper rides home are people doing just what the OP would be
doing if he tried to sail that boat to Texas. He probably would make it
just fine because the odds are usually on your side at sea. They are on
your side in Russian Roulette too.


I like the Russian Roulette analogy. By going to sea, you are taking a
spin of the cylinder and snapping the trigger. Yet you can improve
your odds (analogous to adding extra empty chambers, or taking bullets
out if you prefer) by learning skills, prepping & upgrading the boat
(and one of the dirty little secrets of cruising is that no boat is
fully ready; what's worse is the woeful inadequacy of most boats on
the market), adding equipment (bearing in mind that you can't carry
everything for every possible emergency, and safety is not something
you can put on Mastercharge).

Familiarity with the boat & it's characteristics is a huge plus, too.
That's another big fly in the ointment for many, because it takes
TIME.

We had a good breeze on the river today, rather impressive chop too...
~ 30 kts and nobody at the sailing club went out.

Fresh Breezes- Doug King