Had I been the captain, I’d have waited one day to see what this monster really was.
They could have been going slower to try to let the storm pass or they might have pushing it to try to slip past. I'm having a hard time finding out exactly when they reported their last position off Crooked Key. Then we might be able to tell what speed they were making and what the strategy was. It's hard to understand why they wouldn't have taken steps to avoid the storm assuming they had the latest weather.