I never told you what direction I'm going. When you see vectors in Physics, they are usually lines with little arrows on the end. The direction of the line is the direction of the value, the length of the line depends on the amount of your measurement. That could be an arrow pointing straight up with a length of 30. We're hoping you know how to add and subtract.
Scientists often use vectors to graphically represent numerical problems.
When they have a lot of vectors working at once, they draw all the vectors on a piece of paper and put them end to end. When everything is on paper, they take the start and end points and figure out the answer. If you don't like to draw lines, you could always use Geometry and Trigonometry to solve the problems. It's up to you. So you're in a boat, or a plane for that matter.