Those kind of storms have left me uncomfortable on many occasions in the BVI. The weather can quickly drop the visibility under 1000 feet. The strange thing I have noticed is sometime what looks pretty innocuous can really hammer you. I was down there many years ago when a small buildup you might not give to much thought about turned into heavy rain and 50 knot winds. A monohull under full sail was knocked down with all hatches open and sank almost immediately at the deepest point in the FSD. Thankfully everyone was rescued. Strangely after several months under water the boat was salvaged by one of the dive companies and towed to Peter. They drained the water and oil out of the engine, put new oil and a battery in and it fired up! The boat was motored over to Tortola and fixed.
AIS is a great feature. I suspect it will show up on more charterboats in the future. There are portable AIS systems that will work with a IPad at very reasonable cost.