as I have repeatedly said, you can navigate without electronic charts, paper charts, or most anything else. It used to be the norm. Carrying paper charts against the event of electronic failure is no different than carrying spare parts for your engine: in each case you can do without the spares, even in the event of failure. In each case it is a matter of convenience, and perhaps safety it some unlikely scenarios.

I will say up front that individuals' tolerance for user interface imperfection varies a great deal, and mine is low.

The DPI of a display matters. Your eye can resolve an arc minute or so of detail. That can be exceeded by a very dense display (in DPI) held close, or a not so dense display viewed from a distance. Dedicated navigational displays in boats are far short of the required density viewed at normal distances. Zooming out on a rasterized chart does not preserve all the detail since the detail is lost in pixelization of the display very quickly. Of course vector charts are intentionally decluttered with zoom level. No commonly available display exceeds the resolution of even a cheaply printed page - although the later iPad displays exceed the resolving capability of the eye, hence the term "Retina". The largest commonly available retina displays are about 1/4 of the area of an average printed chart. My eye can pick up detailed information from the whole printed chart, and can pan instantly to details seen and noticed in peripheral vision that are not visible on the electronic display of the same chart.

You state that every bit of your electronics were fried by the lightening strike, yet only one of the GPS devices. If you read a large number of accounts of lightening strikes, you will be aware that lightening is very serendipitous. Your survival, and your electronics survival, are nearly random. It has been estimated that your chances of dying from a lightening strike are about 10%, survival of electronics devices is somewhat lower. All of which is pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Electronic charting can fail in many different ways, some of which are subtle enough not to be immediately noticed. At least if it is a smoking hole you know not to trust it.

I am glad to hear that many charting programs warn of hazards close to a route. The ones I own don't (Raymarine, PolarNavy, Navionics, MacENC, Transas iSailor, and a few others).

When about to enter tricky and unfamiliar waters, I do refer to the relevant paper chart (or its raster scanned image) and compare it to the electronic versions. If there are differences (this is not infrequent) I do not automatically discount either the paper or electronic version. But I am made aware of the ambiguity so that I can use other means (eyeballs, radar, depth sounder, whatever) to resolve the difference. I can tell you by some experience that the new electronic version is not necessarily more accurate than the 1860's derived paper - it has cut both ways for me.

On the whole, I agree with you that electronic charts are probably safer and far more convenient to use than paper charts. I use them almost exclusively. I do not agree that they are universally a better experience though. Just now I am sitting here trying to plan my Bahamas cruise. I have available to me my 15" laptop display with several versions of raster and vector charts. However I am constantly referring to the large scale chart in the Explorer chartbook to understand the relationship of the various details I see on laptop display. If the laptop could display the Explorer charts (none can, they are not supplied that way), zooming instantly between large and small scale (none do), and pan as fast as my eye can move (none do), then the experience would come close. But until then.....