I was thinking it would be cool to have a few changes to the water navigation. I have been playing a lot of a game called Spiritfarer recently. In it some sections of the map are blocked off until you get an upgrade for your ship to progress through that zone. I just thought it would be a cool idea to have something similar in this game. For example some areas would be blocked off by large blocks of ice, or maybe covered in ice which makes it harder for ships to pass through.

To resolve this, the player can attach some upgrades to the ship to brake through the ice. It would also be cool if the user could also place shields onto the boat to improve the ships durability too.

Maybe the the ship could also have a lantern upgrade to allow the player to light a lantern when the seas get foggy.

Overall a few ship upgrades would be cool. I know many of these ideas come straight from the game I previously mentioned above, however I think they could add a lot to the game, and they would also function differently than the above game dew to game play difference.

As it currently stands ship/ water navigation is very easy to do (apart from wind direction) so adding a few ways to make water navigation more challenging would (in my opinion) add more fun to boat navigation.