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Summary
It's easy to get yourself lost in Stranded Deep, even if you have a Compass to aid you. Therefore it could be of immense help to draw a map of you surroundings. With some simple methods this can easily be achieved.

Getting the required materials

 * 1) Find a Compass.
 * 2) Make sure your watch is in working order.
 * 3) Print this compass-rose. Cut it out and punch a hole in the center, about the size of a pinhead.
 * 4) Grab a pen, a ruler, and piece of paper (preferably squared paper as this will make it easier to align the compass-rose to your map).

Getting to work
This will take a couple of minutes (more or less 2-3 minutes). When you are close enough that your destination island renders make a last MINOR course adjustment so that you are able to stop to the left and center of the island. When you have the island's center directly to your right, stop and immediately take note of the time. I arrived at 14:53. You are now free to make landfall.
 * 1) Put a + in the center of your map.
 * 2) Grab your compass and get a bearing on an island. If possible at all try to take your bearings from the center of the island, as this will make your map more precise. But you can take your bearing from any part of the island and still get usable results. I got the bearing 350° (degrees).
 * 3) Put your printed compass-rose on the map, center it over your + mark using the hole you made in the middle and align it to your grid, having north to the top and south to the bottom of the paper. Make a mark on the map at the bearing you got from the previous step. I made a mark at 350°. Also make a note of the bearing adjacent to your mark.
 * 4) Now to measure the distance to the island. This will help us later when triangulating other islands.
 * You'll have to get into your Life Boat roughly 90° to the left of your selected bearing. In my case I put my raft in the water in the bearing of 260°.
 * So now, if you face the distant island at your selected bearing you should have the center of your home island directly (90°) to your right.
 * Now take aim just at the leftmost edge of your destination island. Have your Paddle in hand. Bring up your Watch (press F) and cycle to your clock (left mouse button). You are now about to paddle off to the distant island, where you MUST stay true to your heading and keep a constant speed.
 * Start paddling when the clock hits an easy to remember time. I started at 12:30.

Calculating the distance

 * Now calculate the difference of the two recorded times. In my case my journey took 2:23 (14:53 - 12:30).
 * Convert to minutes (1h = 60m). I got 143 minutes (2:00 -> 2*60=120m and 0:23 -> 23m so, 120+23=143m).
 * Now I just translate this over directly to millimeters, and to scale it down I divided it by 2 getting 71.5mm.
 * Grab your ruler, I use a metric one, put 0 at your home island and align it to the mark you made earlier.
 * Draw a faint/thin line from 0 to the value you got, in my case I drew a line from 0 to 7.1 cm.
 * Make a + at the end of the line.

Triangulating other Islands
This is really easy! Now take bearings on all the other islands you can see from that island and mark it on the map as before ("Getting to work" part 3). Go back to your home island and do the same there. Now you can draw lines on the bearing you marked on your map, and where the lines intersect is an island. Keep in mind a line may intersect several other lines so you may have to measure the distance ("Getting to work" part 4) to determine which intersection is the true one. But most of the times you can rule out the false one just by judging by eye which one is the closest or farthest.