In the short term yes, this happens. In the long term? You all seem to not realize that several centuries of navigation successes attributed to luck stretches t

In the short term yes, this happens. In the long term? You all seem to not realize that several centuries of navigation successes attributed to luck stretches the credibility a bit. It's not like this was one case of luck, it was a long running thing. All the luck cases in your examples rarely last longer than years, let alone centuries. Doubly so considering the whole society built itself on the spoils of the raiders who went out on trips. Such things are not possible on just luck, there has to be an amount of repeatability there. Strongly suggested by the fact that viking raiders were so successful at returning that the ideas, treasures and people (slaves and whatnot) that they brought back fundamentally changed their society.