On our fourth day at anchor, the crewmember went stir crazy and wanted to go to shore. There were two reasons I didn't want him to go. First, the weather was very fierce, with strong winds and high waves forming, even in the anchorage and protected areas. Second, the land he wanted to go to was 5 miles away and the dinghy has a hull speed of 3.5 knots.

To dinghy in settled weather would take about 1.5 hours, and burn about a gallon of gasoline in the process. Gasoline here costs around $6.50 per gallon, meaning that a round trip would cost $13 in settled weather. Today was not settled, and the weather was rather challenging.

The crewmember got rather hot headed and stormed off anyways, bailing out the dinghy as waves crashed over the sides. The journey took him 3.5 hours one way, and cost way too many gallons of gasoline (which is a waste of our cruising budget).

While $13 may not sound like a good reason to keep someone on a boat, the other factor that comes into play is he was taking our only dinghy with him. Should it get stolen or damaged, we would be the ones who are missing a dinghy. Should something happen onboard Wisdom and we need to get to shore, we would be unable to as he had our dinghy.

Once he got to shore, he turned off his radio and we didn't hear from him until the following afternoon when he radioed us that he was returning.

This sort of careless attitude and lack of respect for other peoples things is not a good quality for a crew member.