My experience is limited to being a young Marine being hauled around various parts of the world by the US Navy. I think that some of these storms are much larger than you can imagine, when compared to a storm on land. The ocean is a very big place. I remember being in rough seas for so long that the whole ship smelled like puke. We had to strap ourselves into our racks to keep from being slung out onto the deck while we slept. I know that we had schedules to keep, but I think that we would have avoided these storms if it had been possible. Sometimes some poor sailor who was on watch at night would just vanish. This happened once on a ship I was on.

There are parts of the ocean that's basically impossible. Within the tropics there are like 70-100 major storms a year sizeable enough that they would be news worthy if they made landfall but you don't hear about them because they never do.

And of course we in the US think of major storm season from late spring to late fall, but it's different all over the world.

So if you have to sail through the storm belt you just know that, while you can plan as best you can to avoid, if a storm appears quickly or takes an unexpected path you're riding through.