Series drift is usually blamed on the model, the way a vessel off course blames the current. Read the chart instead. The character was described from memory at every waypoint, and memory edits as it sails: “long black hair” at the first bearing becomes “dark flowing hair” three waypoints later, and the audience watches a stranger quietly take over the passage. The repair is clerical, not technical. Write the navigator down once, on a card you paste rather than retype.
Five fixed entries, always in order
A working bearing card holds five things. Age — a number, always 25 or over. Hair — colour, length and one habitual style. Build — two or three words, no more. Face — one or two details that endure every crop. Signature — the mole, the brass pin, the mark that survives even a tight frame. Everything else belongs to the heading line: outfit, port, hour, light, pose. Heading lines are meant to change at every waypoint. Card entries are not.
Two habits keep the card healthy on a long passage. Entries are stated plainly and positively — “long midnight-black hair in a sculpted pompadour quiff” survives generation, while “beautiful hair” is reinterpreted at every attempt. And the card is versioned. When the navigator is deliberately changed — a new cut, a new signature — the new text is saved as version two with a date, so an old set can still be remade exactly as it was first plotted.
Sailing from the card
Production then becomes a calm routine. Pair the card with heading lines that share one setting and one light, and generate the set at the standard model’s 6-credit cost. Keep the best third. Spend on repairs, transfers and upscales only after the cull. When a frame returns off character, the cause is almost always visible on the chart: a heading line contradicted a card entry, or an entry was too vague to hold. Both are fixed on paper, at the chart table — not by hunting through settings at the helm.
What a card cannot do
It cannot hold a navigator who was never decided. If the entries are adjectives — lovely, striking, perfect — no system on any course will keep her. Decide her on paper first. The bearing card is not where the imagination happens; it is where the imagination is kept, bearing after bearing.