To me Prudent is to not be dependent on anything electronic. I have sailed with highly dependent skippers and will admit the instrumentation can be interesting, but my personal opinion is to go by feel. Things like how is the boat moving and handling the wind and seas. Is she relatively comfortable or is she laboring. These "feelings" tell me when to reef or alter course to make the passage easier on the boat and by extension me. Of course I am old fashioned and do not want any electronics near the compass where they introduce errors that most people don't bother to do anything about anyway.

Yes I do have a chartplotter, DS and knot meter, but I also use paper when underway and practice traditional navigation methods as well as using the chartplotter.