Apparently the rules didn't say that had to look at them.

If they did have a paper chart, then all these arguments are moot - the mistake lies with the navigator/skipper/crew and NOT with any charting program or type of electronic chart.

No matter how badly one wants to vilify electronic navigation or vector charts, it appears that these simply were not the issue here. They would have hit that reef if they were NOT using electronic navigation (it didn't sound like they were using electronics anyway, since they seem to have had their chart plotter set on what amounts to a virtual plotting grid).

Mark