I see that the Bondarenko family has promised the Immigration authorities to put to sea by the 17th January, either to Halifax or south to some Caribbean destination. At this time of year they should be strongly discouraged from either option as their prospects will be almost nil going north, and poor at the very best the other way. The costs and risks of rescue attempts will be significant and hazardous for those forced to carry out the operation.

I am not as experienced as Warren Brown, who has already commented, in extreme latitude sailing, but I have quite a lot of experience of the waters north and west of here to Canadian and US ports, always in a fully crewed and well set up vessels. Most all of this has been in the relatively safe weather window of May, June and July, but even then the weather can become dangerous enough for at least one Bermuda Race to be postponed.

The ingredients that make up the danger come under three headings: unanticipated high winds against the large and now predicable eddies that break off the Gulf Stream in this area, causing wind against current situations where violently breaking seas will pick up and smash down a small vessel so hard that she unlikely to survive with her mast; and second, her crew are like dice in cup, usually exhausted, thrown about, and often badly injured. If there are children, the experience will terrify them for the rest of their lives. Third is the danger to the rescuers who must risk their lives to save them.

Most of this hazard is evident north of a line drawn through Morehead City NC and extended east through Bermuda, because that is where the Gulf Stream has parted ways with the guiding North American continental shelf at Cape Hatteras, distributing its powerful currents like giant oceanic Frisbees to ensnare the unwary. The problem with these now fairly predictable and well plotted donut-like eddies, sometimes 100 or more miles across, is that if your weather/wind forecast has directed you to a sector of the eddy where the wind should be , i.e., favourable with smooth sailing, that is fine ? if previous weather or something else has delayed you, and the wind has by then changed radically over the eddy as it can well do any time of the year but especially in winter, yesterday's carefully selected smooth patch can well become a horrendous maelstrom from which neither wind or current allow easy escape. Even in May it can be bad. In my boat on the way to Rockport, Maine, we crossed fairly closely with the new cruise ship going to Bermuda, and that when some 30 miles away from us, had two of her bullet proof bridge screens, 65 feet up, smashed to pieces by one wave in a 50 knot storm that, with attendant mountainous seas, made up during the night, quite unpredicted from a flat calm - and gave us both a real pasting,

Now, in the winter itself, we are looking at one of the worst patches of ocean in the world ? as a consequence of the greatly amplified effect of storm or even hurricane force arctic winds and the tremendous seas that they build up in the same area as the Perfect Storm. Combined with the bitter cold and freezing fog where lifelines and decks become treacherously slippery, and sails become like corrugated iron, there is still the added challenge of the eddies.

The southern option of watching the weather carefully, picking an apparent slot and leaving as quickly as possible before things deteriorate has its temptations. Generally south of the eddies at this latitude, you can get far enough south to areas where the weather be less violent and much warmer, the passage seems possible in winter. The catch is when the first hundred or so miles you have selected as a window, get overrun by a cold front from a rapidly evolving depression that has formed over the hot waters of the Stream, usually in the latitude of say Charleston. It then deepens, accelerates, and works itself into a truly nasty event with enough low pressure to suck down ferocious westerly, north-westerly and northerly gales, often storm force or worse (that we all experience here in January and February) that may blow for days on end. In this event, if the boat sustains damage (or hits a submerged object as occurred just the other day, or the crew becomes worn out) there is no possible way of returning, to windward, in fearsome head-seas, to Bermuda. And there is of course nowhere else within some 1,000 miles.

Lastly, the possibility of any rescue in these conditions is remote. Also, many believe it grossly irresponsible to allow voyages in small boats in conditions that will clearly make rescue operations extremely hazardous for the rescuers who will risk their lives trying to retrieve them. As a consequence many believe, rightly in my view, that any vessel that plans to leave Bermuda at certain specified times of the year should be subject to possible inspection for seaworthiness, and for documented crew competence. If permission cannot be given, then they should be made fully welcome until an approved period for unrestricted departure, or the vessel's shortcomings are corrected.

From the point of view of the shorthanded Bondarenkos, this latter procedure should without question apply.