Why don't you look at the whole picture. CO was running the CV,
doing flight
ops at night and the dhow was dead in the water. Didn't the 'CO' of
the dhow have a clue?(no!)
As more than a few hapless-well equipped and presumably well informed-
small boys have found out, staying out of a carrier's way can be a
difficult chore at times. Thats especially true if all you are relying
on are visual cues at night, which this dhow likely was.
I strongly suspect that the Kennedy may have fallen prey to a bogus
course and speed presented by an NTDS symbol...I call that kind of
getting snookered by bogus track data the "Vincennes Effect", after a
particularly bad instance of over reliance on what the box tells you.
No matter how high tech, there is no replacing a Seaman's eye.