The command "Follow the Coast" doesn't work very well along the seacoast of southern England. Maybe the tide was out, but we kept running aground!

I found a blooper among your rune collection: the "Overwhelmed Furry Rune". This IS overwhelming! Are we talking fifty-pound kitties or what?

I tried to reproduce the problem by sailing up and down Derwent but everything went normally. The main difference I noticed is that I have the entire Derwent mapped now, whereas there was terra incognita to the north where the problem occurred. This was the first time I was north of the hangup on Derwent, however.

A picture would show the ship's mast flat up against the bridge structure, making forward progress impossible. I guess it was a fluke.

While journeying by boat through Eurvicscire from S to N via Derwent R. I came to a low bridge. The sail had been taken down but the mast refused to budge so I got hung up at the bridge and couldn't go further in that direction. I was unable to discover any keyboard control (or any other control) to raise or lower mast.

Strangely, I was able to fix my problem by removing some of the boilerplate video files that slow down the loading process:

If you are playing on PC, its a simple fix. Go to the game files and find the "videos" folder. Search this folder for the following three files, and delete them, rename them, or move them to a backup folder.
ANVIL_Logo.webm
PC_AMD_Ryzen.webm
UbisoftLogo.webm

Now find the subfolder for your preferred language. For example, if your chosen language is English, look for the folder "en". There should be three webm files there. Delete them, rename them, or move them. Done.

@sidsixt THANK YOU FOR THIS FIX!

It works perfectly.

It also fixed a problem I've been having with the game not loading today.

I've been playing through Valhalla for the second time. Everything went fine until I got to the scene in "War Weary" where the player has to choose to whom he will give some silver. I saved my progress and exited at that point this AM. This afternoon I can't get any of the half-dozen latest saves to load. It looks normal until I click "Continue" -- about five seconds later, the game closes. This was true after I verified game files. It may be coincidental, but I recall a short "update" being downloaded and installed while I was playing this morning; this is the first time I've tried to load the game since then. As far as I can tell, I'm playing version 1.5.1.

My system specs follow:
   CPU: Intel Core i7 10700F 2.90GHz (4.80GHz Turbo Boost), 8-Core 16-Thread
   GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB
   Motherboard: ASUS TUF Gaming B460M-Plus, WiFi 5
   RAM: 16GB DDR4 3000MHz (2x8GB)
   SSD: 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD
   HDD:   Western Digital Blue 1 TB   
   CPU Cooler: RGB CPU Cooler
   PSU: 700W 80 Plus Gold
  Operating System: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

   Monitor: LG 24GM77
   Mouse: Steelseries Rival 310 eSports
   Keyboard: Steelseries Merc Stealth
      Controller: Razer Wolverine Ultimate
      Speakers: Philips SPA 2210
      Microphone: Blue Yeti

Case: Thermaltake Level 20 MT ARGB CA-1M7-00M1WN-00 Black SPCC / Tempered Glass ATX Mid-Tower Computer Case    Dimension: 18.54" x 8.00" x 17.90"
WiFi: Yes
Bluetooth: Yes
VR Ready: Yes

Internet connectivity:

   2022 02 22 -- Ping 25, DL 13.13, UL 0.83
   2022 04 27 -- Ping 29, DL 13.14, UL 0.81

I recently finished run-throughs of Origins and Odyssey. This morning I started Valhalla. I was very disconcerted to find that there's no way to rush through the boilerplate screens every time I start this game. It was a mild annoyance on the earlier releases because I'm good at pressing buttons, but on Valhalla there's no way to progress to the content without a minute for each of five screens that I memorized when I started Origins. PLEASE HELP!

@ubi-milky Thanks for your response. Unfortunately, none of the issues in the article applies to my system. Nor, sadly, did the new update for the Ubisoft launcher solve my problem. Today's launch spent over a minute on the blank screen with the ugly noises. I don't think this is a problem with my system.

Perhaps I could upload a video of the lost time so you'd better understand the nature of the problem?

So I ran the Windows Task Manager while the black, noisy screen was up and verified that ACO and Ubisoft Connect were using nearly 50% of system resources and nothing else was even close, so the system still had 50% capacity idle during this problem.