Quote: It strikes me that most of the respondees are 'old salts' who have sailed for long enough to have terrorised the seven seas long before the advent of the dear old GPS, let alone the plotter..... I count myself amongst that group...
I'm not that old but I sailed in the Decca days and found it far worse than GPS in every way. And so expensive loads of people didn't even bother.
GPS is so good that a good Landfall is considered almost inevitable and no longer even remarked upon!
GPS rocks. If you'd told yachtsmen before WW2 that they could buy on the high street a device giving a (usually) cast Iron accurate position updated in real time for the price of a pub dinner for 2 they'd have snapped it up.
The chart issues is slightly different to GPS. You could argue about your preferred chart format forever. I like paper charts purely because of the large 'screen size', but then if I had to buy worldwide charts I doubt I could even afford all paper.