Over 10 years ago, I did the training you do if you want to be offshore crew. Loads of fun stuff like righting a capsized lifeboat in a training pool in full kit while someone sprays you in the face with a firehose. Anyway even back then we were taught: the era of epic survival stories is over, because with the proliferation of PLBs, EPIRBs, TABCEs, Iridium and so on, you could always signal someone. You might still die of course, but at least your location would be known :-)

It is still possible to get lost if you want to - the oceans, the mountains, the deserts are very very big. But you would either be doing it deliberately or you would be extraordinarily negligent, there's no middle ground here, really, assuming whatever the problem was didn't kill you immediately. That's why I am extremely skeptical of this story of two women who were apparently lost at sea for 5 months, because their engine that on a sailing yacht you only use to manoeuvre in the harbour anyway failed...