The world is complicated, sailing shouldn’t be... With all the new tech available today is sailing getting better or just more complicated?
Was boating better in the nostalgic "good ol' days"?
20 years? A good many of us started sailing pre-GPS. Try 40 years ago or more.
GPS is like cheating. Many days I leave it off, not like I'm going to get lost anywhere with a day of home. I always liked paper charts and looking for landmarks. But I'll keep GPS as an improvement for trips, and it is nice for documenting double-diet speeds. But a $5000 plotter seems absurd. I was thrilled when we got lon/lat.
Autopilots can really relieve the tyranny of the tiller, making longer trip so much more practical for singlehanders. Running off a wind sensor is nice, but just magnetic is enough. Yes, there were wind vanes, but they have always been fussy and impractical for many things. I certainly wouldn't call them simple.
Depth sounders are pretty nice. How vital depends on where you sail, draft, and coastal piloting skills. I don't use it much, but I sail familiar waters and the bottom is sand or mud. My first two boats had no sounder, and I circumnavigated the Delmarva with one of the them, including running the entire Virginia Inside Passage, which is a lot of shallow water. I watched the chart and ATNs. I'm not even sure GPS would have helped that much, since much of the charting was old and things move. You really sensed the depth mostly by really looking at color and waves, and getting a feel for where sand deposits. You had to think your way through it. And mostly I was running too fast for a depth sounder to save you.
---
I would be OK with going back to nothing electrical for day sailing at least. Kind of nice. In fact, often I don't turn any of it on. I've known people to cancel even short cruises when their nav suite or autopilot went out. Silly. Embarrassing, actually.