[Sailor Steve]

I don't know if it's normal for the game or not, or if the game is sophisticated enough, but I would suspect that your might have something to do with it. New boats are at Pearl Harbor and Surabaya is a real backwater. They might have given you the only boat available.

Since that boat should already have a skipper I would think the more realistic thing would be to send you back to the States to work up a new boat, which might mean a year or more out of the war due to getting out of a remote danger spot first.