Or it could be that they assumed whatever manoeuvre they did perform would be completed safely and can't see why it wasn't.
It sounds like they were turning downwind towards the vessel and that is an easy way to screw up recovery from a wingover if you aren't watching IAS carefully. wash off all the speed at the top and wonder why it takes longer for the IAS to build (because you are downwind) then panic because you want to raise the lever but are worried about VRS with low speed and high RoD, shove the nose down further and run out of height and ideas when the sea arrives.
I hope not.