2 experiences for me in large, large wind, one on a G-Cat 5.0 where a squall came through so fast there was no time to react. The boat turtled and I rode it out in between the hulls in hail, lightning, and 40+ winds. I would certainly do it again if needed and if the conditions(water depth) were agreeable. If it were too shallow then I would stay with boat and try to not get tangled up.
Second time was in an evening race on a C&C 24 with 3 catsailors and 2 small children. A large cloud that had loomed and grew all day truly fell from the sky in a matter of seconds. it grew so large and so high it collapsed sending a doughnut shaped cloud towards the race course. We saw it happen dropped sails hit the motor and were almost back to the club when it hit. bare poles still caused the boat to heel so far we couldn't keep the kicker in the water. All 3 of us got on the back of the boat and were close to shore when we passed another competitor on a 21 ft boat who were screaming at us to help them. We debated for a few seconds and decided we needed to turn around and help them. Bad idea, good thought, but bad idea. We were left going in the wrong direction(back into the storm), we couldn't get to them, and we now were in so much wind we couldn't keep the kicker or the rudder in the water so we couldn't steer down or up and were now headed for the rocks at the dam. At some point we got just enough steerage to point into the wind but with motor at full throttle we were still backing up towards the rocks.
we threw out a large Danforth and watched it skip across the water as were going so fast in reverse, but it finally dove down. We dragged it about 100 ft until it caught approx. 15-20 from the rocks. we then rode out the storm with motor WOFT and the Danforth in place facing the wind.

Bottom line I felt safer on my turtled cat than on that 24 ft monoslug.