I agree, Brian. These sorts of tragedies always make me sad and mad. It was just so preventable.
Here are three guys, going out in a 5 metre runabout, which they only bought yesterday, so had no previous experience with the vessel, had done no shakedown trips to see if, let alone how, everything worked, and went out over 3 miles from shore or more, overnight, and with only an EPIRB, (thank goodness), but apparently no working radio.
They got the motor swamped and rendered inoperable, were not able to raise any help via radio, yet still failed to put on lifejackets, and were only wearing board shorts when rescued - no warm clothing, yet this is our Winter, and when they were flipped they were caught so unawares they could not don their lifejackets, which they should have had on. One even had to dive back under the sinking boat to get the EPIRB, which did, in the end, allow for the two younger chaps to be saved by rescue chopper, but the 57yr old father of one of them perished. There were several commercial fishing boats quite near, but not near enough to draw their attention by visual signals, but could have been via VHF. Such sadly unnecessary loss of life.