[sailingdog]

Originally Posted by camaraderie

Well...I'm all for anyone who wants to learn Celestial and it is just one more from of backup...but with the price of GPS units today you can safely store several units cheaper than you can buy a sextant and it would be extremely unlikely that you would have such a massive loss of equipment without losing the boat!

A single lightning strike could take out all the electronics on a boat, and yet leave the boat and the people relatively unscathed. The EMP pulse generated by a Lightning strike is more than enough to fry all the IC-based electronics, which can not tolerate much in the way of overvoltage. Even a near miss might generate enough of a transient voltage spike to fry the electronics, with little or no other effect.

There are other causes that could leave you without your electronic nav aids. Two that I can think of off the top of my head are:

First, all electronics are pretty battery dependent, and saltwater and batteries are not a great combination. A lightning strike wouldn't even be necessary, if the saltwater ruins the batteries or just corrodes the electrical contacts/circuits enough.

Second, electronics are generally far more valuable as merchandise for thieves to resell than are sextants. You could also be deprived of your electronics due to a thief in the last harbor you were in. It isn't all that likely that he would take your sextant though...