From my first take on it (remember, I'm an amateur writer, too), you have some very creative ideas, but you may be trying to pack too many of them into the same story, and tying them into a tight narrative may be hard.

Sounds like a good background "universe" that may have a number of good stories in it. Or maybe you have a novel on your hands.

It wouldn't be hard to get lost in space if your travelers did not have access to relatively sophisticated astronomical equipment. One would have to be able to track things like quasars and such to get a "bearing" after you lost sight of your local stellar neighborhood. But we're talking hundreds of light years away from home (at least).

Nobody parked near Sirius or Proxima Centauri is going to have trouble figuring out where Sol is.

As for drive plumes, just invent a drive without plumes. Patent pending. I came up with one where the ship vanished at one point and appeared at another, but such ships could be detected by their very tiny, but very sharp gravity wave signal.

Obviously, you have the same trouble cutting and pasting Word documents as many others have had. Might be worth converting to a pure text file and then trying it. I don't have any experience in that myself. I noticed an oddball font thing in one word. Was that deliberate?