70yo? You better hurry, then. Your life is probably halfway over already, so get started now. LOL. 70 is just a number and in no way determines whether you are fit to sail or not. Some people at 50 aren't. Some at 85 are still good to go. So do it like you feel it.
Chartplotter, etc is not the navigator. YOU are the navigator.
Electronics just give you data. Make sure you know what to do with it. Take a course if you have not much background in
navigation. If you intend to journey well out of sight of land, then you should know the rudiments of
celestial navigation. It will hammer important concepts into your
head, it will give you a fascinating hobby, and it will be an excellent backup
navigation system. Or a primary navigation system. Your pick. I think it is a lot of fun to rely primarily on celestial, and check the GPS every few days, on a
passage, just to see how close you got with 200 year (and much older!) techniques. My favorite chart plotter is my everyday
phone, a Samsung Note 3, rooted, unlocked, running a custom OS, and
Open CPN. I also have
OpenCPN running on my Ubuntu powered Dell
laptop, with a BU353 USB
puck style GPS.
Cheap, flexible, easy to use, and neither one is a one trick pony. But if both fail due to
lightning strike or whatever, old fashioned sight reduction tables, almanac, and my old Plath
sextant will make sure I make my intended landfall and never an unintended and unexpected one.
I like simple. I like redundant. My favorite
VHF radio currently is my handful of bright yellow Baofeng UV-5R handhelds. They cost about $30 each and sadly are NOT type accepted so I have an installed old
school plain vanilla VHF so I can always say I was talking on THAT one. However the new
DSC radios offer a lot of potential advantages.
Out of VHF range, you have basically two choices... HF/SSB, and the various
satellite solutions. What's wrong with both? Nothing at all!!! Given an either/or choice, me, I would go with an
HF radio like the M-802 which gives you very effective and convenient comms on both
marine and HAM frequencies. Makes a dandy SW receiver, too. Others have their reasons for preferring
satellite communications such as
Iridium.
Please consider installing
AIS class B. You will be glad you did. And a sounder. Nice to know how much water is between the bottom of the sea and the bottom of the boat.
Radar is cool too, though it does seem like the tail wagging the dog on a smallish boat, until you NEED it.
Learning to set your boat up to steer herself makes watchkeeping much less burdensome on a
passage.
I suspect you will spend a couple of years puttering around the bays and sounds with some
offshore hops initially, and a lot of what you do will not be navigatiing... it will be piloting. When you can see landmarks, you are piloting. When all you have is ocean, you are navigating. Or not. LOL. But it is still quite enjoyable to practice the simple things like LAN (noon latitude by Sun) or compass checks by amplitude or azimuth, even when you can SEE where you are just by looking at the church there,
radio tower there, yacht club clubhouse there, restaurant and bar over that way, numbered channel marker 15 feet abeam to starboard, cow over there , etc. Worst mistake, already mentioned, is to worry so much about where you are on
screen that you forget to check where you are at on the water. Or elsewhere if you are too late LOL.
Learn to maintain stuff. Change
oil and filter,
fuel filters, impellors, etc too early rather than too late. Get dirty
cleaning or replacing
bilge pumps and strainers and float switches. Learn how to tighten your stuffing box juuuuuuuust right so it barely drips. Practice everything you might ever have to do. Best way is to get caught with your pants down where help is available or you are in protected waters and no biggie to be on the hook for a couple days while you sort yourself out. Get some good
books and I heard Nigel Calder's name mentioned, one very good author. Learn how to deal with electricity. Belts.
Batteries. Chargers. Climb your
mast, change your lights to LED so you don't have to climb back up so often. Learn to do your own splicing, and not just three strand
dock lines, either. Get self sufficient. It will pay off big time if you ever take that long journey to distant places. Stuff WILL break or stop working, you can bet on that. And SeaTow doesn't make trips out into the middle of the
Atlantic Ocean to get someone who didn't bring any
fuses or impellors or
fuel filters, or who let the
jib halyard run or can't recover the main sheet or broke the tiller and can't steer or has a leak somewhere in the boat and can't find it or runs out of tootsie rolls and
toilet paper.
But we do know *how* to use them. We use a 
Linear Mode
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