After consulting with Amy, I decided to go with option 2 and redrawing Northwestern Veth. I also tweaked some islands, etc. This is the final pass. Though I might play around with different projections for different purposes, I will not redraw any of the shapes or move stuff around anymore:
http://i.imgur.com/bQ7lHLJ.jpg
I've already started drawing the political boundaries but that's going to take a while.