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The news story says that he had sailed to Bermuda and to the Caribbean in the past. It seems odd that an experienced sailor would go out in those conditions. Maybe he was sailiing to a schedule since he was taking the boat home, and he pushed his luck a little too far.
It doesn't say if he sailed the boat over, pitchpoled, or what caused him to capsize. I would like to know more detail.
I personally don't like sailing smaller yachts in bad weather because IN MY HANDS the margin for error is smaller. I always felt like the wind and seas more easily had their way with the yacht when I was sailing in lighter displacement vessels.
When I started my circumnavigation, a prominent figure in the multihull community told me that catamarans/multihulls under 40 feet were not seaworthy. That made me feel bad because my catamaran was 39 feet long, and I was preparing to sail around the world. Once I started sailing offshore in my Privilege 39, I realized that I had a relatively "heavy displacement" catamaran, and that made me feel more comfortable about my boat and the "Forty foot rule". I never felt afraid in winds up to fifty knots, and I have never been in winds over fifty knots.
We met thirty-five foot catamarans performing circumnavigtions, and they did just fine in bad weather. But I had the impression that the smaller the multihull, the more conservatively it needed to be sailed in marginal conditions.
I remember the solo French captain of Rogue Wave commenting on his own capsize in the Atlantic, and he said that heavier was better than lighter in terms of capsize risk in seriously bad weather. That made me feel a lot better about Exit Only and all of the heavy cruising gear that we had on board.
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