I don't really know for sure, I wasn't there, all I know about this case is from that article, but I don't think there was any foul play, or any fault with the equipment. This gear is pretty much foolproof by now and they had radio. I think they just got lazy, They plugged in their destination and it said "steer this course for X miles". But their course set them right into an island. I don't doubt their gear had all the right features, they probably just didn't use them, and they failed to use traditional methods to back themselves up. That log and chart from the GPS tracker is going to be pretty solid evidence at the court of inquiry. I can't see how it could have happened any other way.

I've sailed similar cruises twice, Catalina Island to Santa Cruz, and San Francisco to San Diego. We used electronics on both trips, Loran going N, GPS going S. In each case we used the electronics to get our position, laid out a course to our destination, checked carefully it was fair, and took frequent fixes with the electronics, complemented by visual sightings on lighthouses, landmarks, and the Channel islands to verify our GPS navigation. Of course, in those primitive days, (early 90s) all we got off our electronic gear was a lat/lon, no fancy digital charts. We did all our chart work on paper charts, with pencil and simple drafting tools. That sort of forces you to stay alert and aware of your surroundings.

At all times, we had situational awareness, we knew where we were, where away and how far the nearest land was, potential hazards, nearby aids to navigation, harbors, and once, when some foul weather hit us, we even had a secluded cove with good anchoring ground picked out ahead of time to duck into, with a cape that offered some shelter from a NW blow.

I remember taking tangent bearings off the Channel Islands and, visual bearings off Morro Bay, Anacapa Light, even Hearst Castle and the gantries at Vandenberg. They're all marked on the chart. The electronics were a great thing to have, but they were not essential, we saw them as a convenience, and we always kept a parallel plot running on the chart with our estimated, or dead reckoning position. This also allowed us to verify our mag compass was working right. Even if we lost everything due to weather or malfunction, we always had a solid posit less than a few hours old we could base reasonable estimates on for a few days if need be.

With electronics you get lazy, you tell it where you're going and it knows where you are, so at any time you can press a button and it will tell you you have '200 miles and three days to go on this course'. So you let slide all that other stuff and forget to look at the chart, or scan the horizon, or keep a man on deck with binoculars. You lose track of where you are. and at night you set the self-steering gear and go below and smoke a joint.

I bet that's pretty much what happened to that Italian skipper in the Med, too.