I addmitt it…I too have done participated in some rather “less than brilliant decision making”…and have so far…live to tell the tale…thanks to the grace of God…If anyone on this forum denies they have fit into this category at one time or another, they are lying to themselves.

Some observations…read into them as you wish…

1) Twenty years experience might mean:
A) Twenty years sailing all types of conditions from small lakes to open ocean, wind strengths from dead calm to hurricane force, in dinghies to Trans-Atlantic racers.
B) Twenty years sailing in a local 20-acre lake on an aqua cat.

One can have 20 years experience, or have one years experience 20 times.

2) How does one gain experience? By doing things…if you have not done something…you are not experienced at it. If one wishes to survive the experience it would be prudent to take small steps in the direction one wants to go rather than jumping in over ones head.
3) Just because you personally are not comfortable or equipped for a certain set of conditions, doesn’t mean the guy next to you is equally ill equipped. (They are several windsurfers that sail “JAWS” on Maui at 80 foot up the face, I can’t/won’t do it, you probably can’t/won’t do it either…but does that mean the local crew out there that have been doing it for years need to stop because of our limitations?
4) Choose the proper equipment for the job…If no production catamaran is designed to endure sustained winds of above a certain force, you are going to have to find something that was designed for that kind of wind like a very small sailboard/sail (less than 3sq/mt{32 sq/ft.}sail for 35 + sustained winds...how much sail does their cat have?), and be a very experienced rider. Or you will have to design your own cat, and hope that you will have conditions a couple times a year that justify the expense of building such a creature.
5) If you are going out in offshore winds make sure the “other side” is considerably less than a couple of thousand miles away,. At least you can blow to the other side before you die of exposure/drown /starve to death.
6) If we were really honest, one would have to admit the kind of personality that would gravitate to search and rescue duty in the Coast Guard has a little more in common with the adrenaline junkies they rescue than most would care to admit. Yes it is an important, serious job…but how many 19 year olds enlist because it is an “important and serious job”…I lived next door to a Coast Guard barracks for several years…they were really good guys…but they are human…I could tell some interesting true stories about their off duty exploits…just as foolish as sailing a outmatched beach cat in overpowering/offshore/open ocean conditions.

For what it’s worth…

Bob