Hey! Yeah, the sail mechanic was borrowed from Sea of Thieves actually. We originally had more “realistic” sailing mechanics, where you couldn’t just go in any direction, and unfortunately we felt that was was a bit too hard to understand, so we switched to this simplified model which we knew people had some experience with (in Sea of Thieves). It is true that it’s a bit hard to tell whether or not you have the sail aligned properly. We ran out of time to add a more accurate wind indicator (i.e. something like wispy wind lines), so you kind of just need to go by the direction the clouds and sea foam are moving, and watch the sail and listen for the sail flapping noises.
For the fishing minigame, you can only fish while you are on the fishing spot, so if your sail is still aligned with the wind, the ship will keep going and you auto-stop fishing once you are no longer in the spot. I agree that we could have made that a bit clearer, but that was another thing we ran out of time to do :(
Love the suggestions about stuff to manage while the wind isn’t in your favor, and totally agreed that more UI/tutorializing are necessary. Thank you for playing!