My argument has always been that those dangers were also present on all of their electronic charts, and were simply unmistakable and unavoidable on two of their chartplotters, while being a bit more subtle on the other two (from which your picture originates).

So let's put aside a couple of things that I think we can agree on as being clear:
1. Any raster electronic chart is identical to a paper chart. The paper/electronic argument doesn't exist with raster charts - except for debating "old man eyes and fumbly fingers".
2. Their B&G chartplotter Insight vector cartography clearly showed land on those shoals at all zoom levels - the same as the paper chart.
3. The official government hydrographic office electronic vector charts also clearly show land on those shoals at all zoom levels - the same as paper charts.
4. Although not mentioned here, but relevant to this, is that the private-company Navionics vector charts also show land on those shoals at zoomed out levels.

So in general, electronic cartography and its usage isn't the argument - that leaves us with the private-company CMap vector charts themselves as the sole argument in this specific case.

I don't know why the HO charts were not being used in favor of the CMap ones. Or why CMap was favored over Navionics. Or why over many days, nobody ever even looked at their B&G cartography. However, it doesn't actually matter here because it turns out they did not even unlock and use the detailed CMap charts they did have.

Stitching charts is an electronic thing. It is very convenient and useful, however, one must be aware of its possible artifacts. When charts are stitched, the stitched charts may be of different scales or different survey/datum. This leads to the "strangeness" in your picture (which is due to different scale charts being stitched together). It should be noted that stitching charts is a user choice and can be turned off in most charting programs (all that I have used). Stitching can also be done with raster charts - with similar results. Stitching can also be done with paper charts with similar results - but most people don't bother for obvious reasons...

As I said earlier, the CMap cartography in that area doesn't seem like the best. It clearly is inferior to the other three cartography options listed above. However, even in your picture there are warnings. That purple blobby line around the shoals designates an economic zone around a land mass, and is an official international symbol for such. If you clicked on some of those purple exclamation points littering that area, you would find text warnings about the charts being based on old manual depth soundings, and that dangerous shoals exist in this area.

Also, the software programs themselves provide a list of text warnings of an area, as well as showing outlines of smaller scale charts when they exist. These were both deliberately turned off by the navigator on Vestas.

But it really comes down to this: Who in their right mind navigating deep open ocean would look at your picture (the worse of electronic cartography in existence, at the worse zoom level) and say "hey, that looks OK - I will just ignore all those purple warning things and shoot right over that blue 20' depth area marked "CARGADOS CARAJOS SHOAL" without any further investigation"?

This wasn't a paper/electronic thing, or a young/old thing, or a racer/cruiser thing or anything else debatable. This was a massive cock-up of the most basic navigational skills - where blame or excuse cannot be assigned to anything external of the navigator himself.

In the case of the Vestas navigator, to say that he would have been helped by glancing at a paper chart is the same as saying he would have been helped if he had a helicopter flying ahead of him telling him where he was headed.

Mark