Very true. Night time in rough seas is pretty sketchy.
My only sailing adventure was a 44ft Katamaran chartered around the Whitsunday's. There were 10 of us and around 30 cases of beer for 7 nights. I was the only person with a boat liscence but there was no way I would sign my name for that boat. Turns out you don't need a liscense to hire a 44ft yacht in the Whitsundays.
We nearly sunk it 3 times in 7 nights. The first night we came unstuck as a storm whipped up Nara Inlet and the novices I was sailing with did not let enough anchor chain down. I drank all afternoon and woke up at 3am in the morning.
The unliscened captain was running around naked and woke me up for help. We fired up the engines about 3m away from a even bigget yacht.
We missed it by a meter full throttle reverse was the only way. It was pouring rain so hard that we could not even see the cliffs either side and could only just make out the lights from all the other boats we had drifted into.
Waves were so rough we could not get the anchor to stick until daylight when we could see.
All that drama in an inlet. In whitsundays with even worse situations to follow.
