Columbus was wrong. While the grandparent posits a hypothetical where there was no land in between, that's not what Columbus critics suggested -- they suggested that the known size of the Earth was such that a more economical route to the Indies from Europe sailing West was not a reasonable thing to expect.
They were correct, and Columbus -- who insisted that he had reached the (East, now, because of the confusion he caused) Indies -- was wrong.
It was still a gamble where the outcome was entirely unexpected. They were both wrong about their expectations: finding the indes, or finding nothing and running out of resources.
True, but one could say that the critics of Columbus based their opinion on reason and knowledge: world is too big to find India that way, and you can't know that there's land in between.
Columbus wasn't looking for America. He had miscalculated the circumference of the earth and thought he could sail west to India. The Portuguese laughed him out of the country because of this. Note that the Caribbean was called the West Indes for this reason -- Columbus thought he had hit India.
Sure. But the bet on finding something paid off when others would not have made the journey. The outcome was something nobody expected. They were both wrong.
For someone to be wrong, they have to have made a some statement that turned out to be incorrect. The people that disagreed with Columbus' calculations said that the earth was larger than Columbus gave it credit for. This was not an incorrect statement.
