After they had made some headway in helping Ai Haibara Meow fit in, a more important question confronted Xie Wen and the cats-
Where were they now?
Unlike the "calm and peaceful" Four Seas, the Grand Line had all sorts of extreme, utterly unpredictable weather, so there were no nautical charts to speak of. Navigating depended entirely on two special tools: Log Poses and Eternal Poses.
Although Xie Wen and the others had a Log Pose that Garp had kindly given them, it was of no use for the time being.
A Log Pose had to fully store an island's magnetism before it would point toward the next island. Since Xie Wen and the others had not entered the Grand Line through Reverse Mountain, their Log Pose had not stored any magnetism and naturally could not give them a direction.
"So we have to find an island that can supply magnetism first, then... see whether we can buy any Eternal Poses for other routes there," Xie Wen told Hua Mei Meow, who was in charge of navigation.
Indeed, even if they found an island, the Log Pose still would not let them sail straight across the Grand Line. After entering the Grand Line through Reverse Mountain, there were seven different magnetic routes in all. They extended along the Grand Line and gradually converged, ultimately reaching the destination of every Log Pose-Lodestar Island.
In other words, whichever route they were on, once the Log Pose had fully stored the magnetism, it would only point toward the "next" island. To change routes and sail across the Grand Line, they could only rely on Eternal Poses, which were unaffected by magnetism.
Without an Eternal Pose at present, Xie Wen and the others could only pin their hopes on-
"Lucky little angel Klee! Please