My first CO believed that submarines should be stealthy all the time. He didn't put out the radar ball (a retro-reflector to account for the low observability of the sail relative to a submarine's size) or turn on any of the running lights.
We operated that way even when steaming on the surface in the shipping lanes shared with the Port of New York.
So it isn't always a matter of "actually knowing how to pilot a boat". Sometimes its just plain recklessness.
