Starting with number 7), tell me where I go wrong.
The moon is 0.5 of a degree wide (give or take) when seen from earth. This means that if you drew a moon next to a moon next to a moon all the way around its orbital path you could draw 720 moons.
You say that the navigator necessarily has an error when finding the centre of the moon. Could you expand on that? If I had, say, a circle cut in a piece of metal that (give or take) represented the moon, then by positioning the moon within that circle, the plumb line would cut straight through the centre and down...so one could see the stars in another cut out, maybe one with degree markings--even a grid of some kind (fine hairs stretched tight?)
So you are saying that the human eye-moon relationship has a necessary innacuracy--error-of 1/27.4th of the width of the moon?
I'm thinking of a network of astronomers, spreading out from central points, so the mariner could arrive in a port and know "the time" at that port and how it related to their home port. Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.