Because you like pain...As Mr T says, "**** it up fool" :-)
I agree with Bug. Offshore, you got one chance to get it right. If you don't error on the side of safety, then you are erroring on the side of foolhardy.
I've made that mistake a couple times in the tiny-little Cheaspeake Bay. Once in a 19 foot aluminum Lone Star Boat. It looked just like this, but with a white bimini top and vinyl side curtains when we left dock that day.
http://www.fiberglassics.com/library...starb65010.jpg
One example : USCG had small craft warnings out, but all we could see on the radar said maybe 25 mph winds, so we ventured out. We were about 15 miles away from where we launched, and at about mid of the bay right off Tangier Island on the Intracostal waterway when the USCG estimates not only came true, but became obivous as an understatement. All details aside, what took us 20 miuntes time to run out, took us 4 hours to get back. The white bimini was torn and layed back, one vinyl side curtain was gone, and both the port and starboard fixed window glass were spider-webbed from where the windshield frame had become become deformed. Most of the damage came as we had to turn into the wind at 1/2 throttle just to maintain position and to address the surf at the bow rather then have it push us and take the surf at the beam. That Lonestar sounded like a busted tin can the whole time, but the hull took it.
So yep, in salt water applications, error on the safe side. PS: this is part of the reason Cumberand, even at its angriest doesn't beach me. And that's why the moniker Hurricane Bob came to be.
Besides......there are things that can bite you in salt water, the Gulf, Bay, or an ocean. :-)