Just as they will abuse more accurate navigation tech.

But that's poor seamanship(timeless), no different than those that found themselves unprepared in the past. You have this handful of disaster at sea samples as fodder to support a sudden downward spiral of today's sailors vs. the now aging group (us ), that I think you imply, were the better sailor.

Interesting theory and hard to disprove(or prove).

All I'm saying is that a large body of data(USCG, now SAR) compiled across much of the globe, that does in fact include a huge, non-ocean crossing group of sailors, is showing a fairly recent decline in the amount of rescue activity at sea. In that large data is also those few, but steady, ocean crossing segment of mariners.

This current data is no proof either, that rescues at sea are in a decline. I only point out that this data is diametrically opposed to your theory. Inconvenient at the least.