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Reckoning

You will never see where the ship truly is.
Only where your pencil says it is —
until the coast decides otherwise.

The chart is a belief

Each watch, you order a course (a compass bearing) and a speed. The helmsman is not perfect, and the sea has currents you cannot feel.
You cast the log to read your speed — a knotted line paid out astern. It is a good instrument. It is not a perfect one.
From course and logged speed alone, you plot where the ship must be. That pencil mark is the only position this game will ever show you.
Sooner or later, land appears — and it is rarely exactly where your pencil swore it would be. The gap is real. Correct, and sail on.
Reach the Azores before the water runs out. Five voyages, and the sea grows less forgiving each time.

Course

Speed

Sound (log casts, landfall bell)

The water ran out

No landfall came in time, and the barrel is dry. This is not a verdict on you as a navigator — the sea simply won this crossing. Every good captain has a voyage like this one in the log.

Five voyages logged

You have crossed for the Azores five times, by pencil and log line alone. Whatever the sea taught you, it taught it honestly — at your own hand, at every landfall.