It's an interesting and on going discussion
An old sailor friend of mine, when I was first preparing to go offshore 20 years ago, when "gadgets" were just coming on line, used to say, that's all very good, but what will you do when it doesn't work?
I took that philosophy to heart regarding everything to do with passage making, not just charts and navigation, everything.
That's why I still plot our position on a paper chart with time, course and speed, still get out and dust off the sextant occasionally, and still have paper charts for places i intend to cruise. There is nothing like the luxury of an Admiralty chart that one can unfold and spread out in it's enormity to get a good look at how things lie. You can't do that on a chart plotter unless you have a ridiculously large screen (like land bound folk that watch the football and movies) which is totally impractical on any vessel smaller than about 100ft.
Yes we use electronic charts, C-Map, Navionics, free raster on Open CPN, Google Earth geolocated KAP files, why not? it's all available, some of it free, but what happens if the batteries fail, or the engine won't start to charge the batteries, or you're hit by lightning? These things happen. Paper charts and traditional navigation methods are insurance and I for one do not support the elimination of paper charts - folios, maybe, I've never bought them, I have Admiralty, SHOM etc official large paper charts and I don't want to give them up.
As regards corrections, I have some quite old charts that are well out of date but now unpublished. They are also a valuable aid in navigating unknown areas.
And lets not forget that the ENCs are based on the official paper charts, some of which are, especially in the Pacific, based on very old surveys, where the longitude, particularly can be miles out.
We need all the assistance we can get when navigating in distant waters and I for one would never give up on paper charts.
Best regards
Alan
Elyse