That Captain needs a medal and a parade, and a unit citation for the crew for only taking the nose off the Ady Gil instead of cutting it smooth in half at the crew compartment.
From what I can tell from the Youtube vids the Ady Gil seemed to stall just as they were cutting across the Japs' bow. That raceboat was obviously never made or intended to operate in Antarctic waters; it was made to get on smooth water and go fast. Watching it yaw back and forth in the choppy seas they were in makes me think that finally something gave, or water got into an engine or something and of course Watson will never admit it because he's criminally insane.
Since their prurpose was to interfere with the Japanese vessels in any way possible, I'd strongly suspect someone cut the throttles when the figured they were in the way.
The Ady Gil was built to race around the world, so it certainly was capable of handling the waters. And Bethune, unlike the Sea Shepherd crew, actually knew how to drive a boat.
And in fact, he actually had the intention of saving whales, rather than the Sea Shepherd, which seems to be about TALKING about saving the whales.
It looked to me like Bethune pulled in front of the boat and stopped, to force the whaling ship to stop — only the whaling ship didn’t stop. Bethune didn’t think they’d run him over, and he was wrong.
Then he boarded the ship and started throwing things at the crew members, getting a foreign substance in the eye of at least one crew member. So he was charged with assault, as well as illegal boarding of a vessel.
And since they found bows and arrows on his ship, there was talk about getting him on other charges as well. After all, you could see it as a ship with armed crew members chasing a legally operating vessel, attempting to cut them off, and then boarding. Kind of like pirates.
But I still respect Bethune a lot more than Captain Lard. Bethune put his money where his beliefs were, and was willing to take real action to stop what he felt was a criminal activity. Captain Lard just talks a big game to get rich liberals to give him money.