> It shows, I suppose, how "dumbed down" the whole thing has become. It hardly seems like any of the original elements remain, from communications, to weather forecasts, to navigation.

On the other hand, she'd never have come through alive without all that hi-tech gear and support! She's just the first to put it all together and go do it. In ten or twenty years, her feat will be small compared to whatever is new at that time.

It's pretty funny to read a paragraph from wagga's link:
I was on the phone with several of the guys on my team and we decided to try one last thing. I restarted the system, which is almost impossible when it's rough out - you have to put the tiller first to starboard, set that limit, then to port and then center it. The tough part is that to do this, you have to set it on the auto pilot display which is down below at my chart desk. By the time you've gotten down below the tiller is pretty much never in the right place. I have strings tied to the tiller and running around the poles on my dodger through the two little windows right down to my chart desk. I remember the first few times I had tried to restart the pilot without the strings set up, running back and forth millions of times and never getting it quite right. Anyway, this time after I did the restart and got things set up it worked!

Here she is, out in the middle of nowhere, but able to communicate with an entire crew of helping hands. Amazing! Sure it's high tech. But it's fun to read along as it unfolds.