Professionally speaking,(I have held a Masters license since 1975), This was just some real bad decisions, just as Dee said, Unfortunately some of those guys paid with their lives for those bad decisions.
Sadly some folks feel that because they can afford to pay for a boat then they have the right/ability to operate it . That is like someone buying a plane and setting off to fly across the ocean.
Its not like buying a $40,000 car and taking off for a drive in the country
The open sea is not like a small inland lake or a river with no current, it can be unforgiving, there are circumstances that can come up out there that even experienced and licensed operators would have problems with.
The wind, tides, rough seas and unexpected bad weather can make a fun day of offshore fishing become deadly. A brisk 20 knot wind can make the ocean untenable for a small craft, when standing on shore one might say its windy here but its sunny and not a cloud in the sky, and 2 miles offshore there are 10 ft seas and enough chop and confused sea to swamp the kind of craft those men were in.
My Father who served in the NAVY in the Pacific and as a Captain of a Survey vessel for a major oil company in the gulf of Mexico, would not go fishing with me in my 25 ft twin engine fishing boat. When I asked him why he said "Its too small to be out there, Not me". Now that is a stretch but it was the way he felt about the gulf after earning his living out there for 30 years.
I remember Dee saying something about being aware of your surroundings in another thread. It holds true at Sea.
