Like many others, the issue of navigating caused me to constantly get lost, so looked around and found a free map called MARBLE, this allows you to plot a course, although not 100%, it will help. Note you will have to know how to translate Bearings [135 deg into Hdn ie. SE].
The other thing it allows you to place Country flags and INFO about ports in a drop down box, which is useful for knowing what is in each port.
NOTE: you will need an early version, as newer have removed the ability to add flags.