Hi Alan,
Before you give up completely ( and believe me I have almost done so a number of times ) it is worth persevering - true, SSE will drive you nuts with frustration at times, just when you think you have figured something out something else will pop-up......maybe you have seen my post regarding the Albtatross Bow Visor issue.....just suddenly popped up ( literally in terms of the visor :-) ) out of the blue. But with a lot of patience and perseverance you can also get a lot of enjoyment from SSE......
With regard to your problems in finding your way around - if you are running a mission, on the compass at the bottom l/h side of the screen you can turn on the Waypoint Indicator, this is a button with a small circle adjacent to the N ( North-up ) button immediately below the compass....when turned on a small white circle will appear on the compass indicating the direction that you need to head for to the next Waypoint....be careful though, depending on the mission this may route you through shallow water/obstacles etc. so you may need to occasionally deviate from direct routing but at least you will know in which direction to sail........as you get closer to the destination you should be able to see the green star on the chart, you can zoom the chart in and out as vin_sun explained.
hope this helps.
Andy