Returning to the high seas

[Shakermaker]

Ahoy fellow sailors. After a long foray into other game genres I want to get back into sims. I have always been a flight boy (forgive my insolence, this being a 'wet' forum) and the recent release of the new Il-2 Sturmovik game has made me all giddy in the stomach. The game seems very much to be a work in progress though, with lots of reports about bugs and bad / non-existent optimization.

Which reminded me of the Silent Hunter 5 release (or any SH release for that matter ... ). I bought the game last year, but didn't really play it because of the state is was in. The box has been gathering dust for almost a year now so I dug it up again for a weekend of hunting on naval prey. My first port of call for recent information about the game and its mods was of course the Radio Room, but I was kinda unsettled by the sheer amount of mods everyone is using.

I don't mind the vanilla experience that much. I read about the UI mod everybody is raving about in the other newbee thread and that seems to fix my biggest gripe about SH5: the new controls (as in: different from SH3/4). But other than that I am lost. Which mod, if any, should I install? Are there any good compilations that I don't know of?

Thanks in advance for your help.