Most stores that sell telescopes sell a map of the stars that show you the night sky, it's adjustable to the time and date. It is round made of plastic and weighs about 1oz I keep one in my pack with my compass.

I'm just arguing against the Orion (kite) method , which might lead you to nowhere. The other two, which was very well described by Micah513, are sufficient enough. Though, the starchart is the best tool if you happen to have an obscured sky view (forest, hills, clouds, window...).

I really wanted to check this out further, because I sure don't want to mislead anyone. I went outside last night & we were mostly clouded over. Could not make out any stars at all in the North or South, but there was a band straight up & to the west where the clouds were thinned out. In the middle of that thin band was Orion's belt. It was very easy to make out because the less bright stars are all drowned out. The kite is pointing about 10 degree's off of true north towards the west.

So you definitely don't want to follow this constellation (unless you want to go NNW ) as true north. However, the top of the kite does point northward & Orion's sword definitely points southward & I will still use this so I can quickly get my general directions down. Then move onto the other constellations (Cassiopeia & Ursa Major) to get a more precise true north.

I guess "navigate" needs to be defined.

If you mean "navigate in terms of lattitude and longitude," that's a tall order. It requires knowledge, practice, equipment and reference materials to do effectively.

But if you mean "orient yourself and move in the right direction by dead reckoning," that's another thing entirely.

Anyone can learn to find the North Star (Polaris) on a clear night.

And, anyone can get a very crude east/west line during a sunlit day, using the "stick and shadow" method. But: in my limited experience, this is not exact, so it's best to experiment in your lattitude and figure out the error factor. I suspect the error increases as your lattitude increases (i.e., going north).

Problem... No horizon visible on land...
Answer... Artificial horizon.
About $23.00 for a cheap plastic one that uses water for the reflector



to who knows how much for a mercury one like THIS ...

I only have one of the plastic ones...

Nice find! But for the survival purposes a simple improvised plumb-line (a rope with weight) is precise enough. And the measurements are less complicated with it. The longer the rope the higher the precision. In fact, the real horizon line is a necessity for the rocking ship situation only (I doubt the artificial one would work on the ship well). If absolutely necessary, an inexpensive bubble level would give you about 1 minute precision (1/60th of a degree), what's more than enough for visual measurements, which theoretically allows to determine your location with ~1mile precision.