My point was that we have unwittingly acquired very many GPS devices over the years. Yes, some or many could be taken out by a lightning strike. But we have a LOT of them! Having taken a direct and catastrophic strike, we only lost one of the nine GPS's.

It is as easy to say "if you really have no electronic charts, you should be resigned to doing without charts at all in certain events" - after all, I can think of as many scenarios where a paper chart is lost as I can electronic.

And the important point here is not the chart itself, but the redundancy of the GPS systems. I will never be learning celestial or carrying a sextant. If all charts are lost, having a position fix is really the only important thing. We have enough waypoints, guidebooks and pure questimates to get us to shelter safely. Even across an ocean.

The whole paper chart issue is just one those periods in time where people need to re-examine their previously tightly held notions, step back and recalculate again. I know I did that in the past year and was surprised to be disabused of one of my cherished rocks of belief. And we don't even have an i-thingy!

The same discussions occurred in the recent past around keeping sextants on board "just in case" and "for safety reasons", and similar were probably held around digital timekeepers, depthsounders and other game-changers in boating.

Mark