>>There might have been a failure of electronics, said Capt. Pete McIsaac, president of the San Francisco Bar Pilots Association. “When you are in the fog, you rely heavily on electronics,” he said.<<
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/09/MNIOT9411.DTL
All pilots have incidents and mishaps on their records, and I’m sure that Capt. Cota was relying on the best info he had available to him. I’m guessing that there had to be a radar or sonar problem that caused them to rely on GPS or GNSS, which can be wrong by 10 meters very easily.