I appreciate you pondering what you, as a person you are, would really do in that kind of situation - instead of escaping into the fictional thought-experiment setting where people often tend to think something like "what is an ideal moral person supposed to do in this situation?".

I also have my own answer on what I would do in this situation, but I'm not (yet) writing it here, for to me it is more interesting to hear what other people feel and think about the situation described.

And, I like the way you think about possible action taken earlier, before the dilemma takes place. I mean, I have this dream of making a philosophical game, or a few of them, where the player would face this kind of situations, given multiple choices at various stages of the story, and each decision would greatly affect the future options available. I hope one day I'll find myself in a situation where I can make such games. (If the boat doesn't capsize, that is...)