[Amgine]

Larger boats are inherently very much safer than smaller ones from a sea keeping point of view. This very obviously so once one gets to beyond 40 - 45 foot. Hunt out the statistics for knock downs and abandonments in the likes of the 1979 Fastnet, the 1984 Sydney-Hobart, and the 1998 Sydney-Hobart and you will see the far greater vulnerability of smaller sail boats compared to larger ones (albeit those examples in a race situation), especially when it comes to knock downs and abandonments.

This is not true, as I understand naval architecture. A larger boat is relatively less likely to be capsized through wave action (it simply takes a larger breaking wave, which is relatively less likely), but a knock-down or broach is directly related to sail area and wind, not directly to boat length. (Although yes, I know, there is a resistance factor related to length, it is simply not a large percentage of the ultimate stability moment.)

The sail area, however does not [usually] increase linearly with the length of vessels. So, relatively speaking, a larger vessel is less likely to be knocked down in similar wind strengths while a linear increase should have the same likelihood.