"Whose friggin' bright idea was it to head out to sea?" Ingnook would have said, had a real language been developed though he still made himself understood. And so our protagonist has at long last emerged.
The other, minor characters of the scenario were unrecognizably green, hanging off the sides of the somewhat-sturdy ship, puking their brains out overboard.
And so we have setting. What we need now is another dramatic event, something that will step up the pace and bring our protagonist, Ingnook, face to face with another major unexpected turn of events. This comes in the form of a whale and a shipwreck and and another choice (left to the reader in honor of Roland Barthes) as to what happens next.
They decide to stick with the ship and drift east . . . or, . . . abandon ship and swim west.*
*This is less a 'writerly' approach, but rather influenced more by the guesswork and excitement of IF.