...you spend too much time sailing in a region where the overwhelming percentage of boaters actually have a pretty good idea of what they're doing... (grin)

Can you point us to these 'statistics' that accidents due to navigational errors are supposedly on the decline? I've never seen any that pertain to recreational boating in particular, the sample size is so small, it seems fruitless to attempt to extrapolate any real meaning from the broader numbers I've seen... On the other hand, I have come across references to stats that would appear to indicate quite the opposite trend:

http://www.dockwalk.com/essentials/docktalk.aspx?g=posts&t=30998

" According to Geir Skoglund, vice president of loss prevention for the Norwegian Hull Club, “Despite having far more sophisticated equipment, [boats] are currently twice as likely to have an accident due to navigational error than they were five or six years ago.”

I cited the North Sea incident because it seems to be perfectly illustrative of the mindset reflective of what constitutes 'navigation' for so many today: namely, the simple plugging in of a distant waypoint, hitting GO TO, engage the autopilot's TRACK mode, and you're done... Surely, you'll admit that electronic navigation at least played a significant ROLE in such an accident, no? Those islands the Polish ship fetched up on happen to lie directly on the rhumbline between the harbor entrances of Perth and Antwerp, you don't think the fact that the grounding occurred there was a mere COINCIDENCE, do you? Sorry, but I really don't see how one can deny that this type of navigation permits at least the possibility or likelihood of the watch to become somewhat more 'disengaged' from the process, than before...

"He says that even when captains assume the utmost caution in plotting a proper course, there is still a risk of crew becoming complacent or placing too much trust in the electronic navigation systems, particularly on extended passages when everyone gets fatigued and even the captain eventually has to sleep.

“There was a time I woke up because my internal clock told me I should have felt a course change by now,” he says. “I looked up and saw that the crew on watch had totally missed a waypoint…we were miles off course – the boat icon was not even on the screen.” In an attempt to try and counter this kind of mistake, “I purposely will not set the nav mode on the autopilot,” this captain says. “I want the crew to be watching the chart and making the course changes themselves, but that is still no guarantee that they won’t just tune out. It drives me crazy because it’s common sense, and they act like they have no idea how dangerous that can be.”

Nav mode appears to be a hot topic in itself. There are captains who say they will not connect that option, and others who tell their crew that the function is not operational even when it is, because they feel the crew on watch will be disengaged if the autopilot automatically alters course at each waypoint."