Thanks for sharing, it's a well written and poignant story. I think it's easy to find faults from a distance. I'm also of the opinion that younger / tougher sailors would have sailed home as the mast was still up, the sails there, the boat wasn't taking on water, and the inoperable pumps sounded fixable since they were supposedly only clogged by paper..
But I wasn't there. In my mind 2 things were much harder to fix: 1) They were a couple of exhausted / beaten 70 year old folks showing physical signs of distress coming from off-shore exposure and hypothermia. 2) The dinghy / life raft were gone. If the boat did start to sink, they had no options. It's pretty clear that they "gave up" on a likely to be fixable situation but the real issue was that they were also really worried that either one or both could fall seriously ill or worse before they could reach the shore. I wouldn't want to be the widower that caused his / her better half to perish by saying: "He/ she'll be just fine" the boat's replaceable. -Francois Rivard 1990 34+ "Take Five" Lake Lanier, GA
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