How to draw a compass rose

Having a fine grid and enabling snap to grid will help in keeping things symmetrical. Start by drawing a circle large enough to encompass anything which you will be drawing for the sake of rotating things at need:

Then draw a circle which aligns with the outer circle and zoom in on a small detail which relates to it:

The arrow/indicator for south seems to be a curved pointer — something like a portion of a lens or vesical piscis — this could be drawn using the curve tool, and while it could be made by overlapping, I believe that it’s actually a half-arrow / right triangle which is easily drawn with the polyline tool:

Note that each point extends beyond the circle and is aligned to a grid point — that makes closing paths and aligning things easier.

Select the just drawn triangle and duplicate it twice using command/control c (Edit | Copy)

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