It’s worth noting that “No one had ever traced such a track, as a modern navigator would do” is just wrong. Joseph B. Murdock was with the United States Coast Survey and an instructor at the US Naval Academy and he came up with San Salvador as the landing site at the turn of the 20th century. Historian Samuel Eliot Morison sailed up and down the US’ East Coast in a small boat just for funsies and so knew that kind of navigation as well as anyone; he came up with San Salvador too in the 1930s.