Mixture, before dismissing her claim we should consider ambient lighting at the time. Good night vision adaptation, moon light, star light, cloud cover etc.
Maybe she needs more benefit of the doubt, who knows ? But things like waiting so long doesn't help her cause. She also says the weather was not its best
"we were at the tail end of a very, very harsh passage into the weather which was had been mountainous, having been flooded badly from the anchor locker and swamped ".
Parts of the story are possibly plausible, but then the detail seems to be causing a few eyebrows to be raised.