My understanding was that we were going to follow "option 3" out of LC's 3 suggested pathings. Here's his original image again:
Now, I admit that I could have easily misunderstood the graphic, but my understanding was that we'd be sending WB Explorer #1 out to the east following that green arrow and then would roughly follow the red path backwards.
Then, WB Explorer #2 would roughly follow the blue path out of Paris.
Now, to be honest, I am not too worried about exploring only the inner ring, since WB Explorer #3 was slated to go west in order to "clean up" any remaining inner-ring hidden squares that we'd missed.
If it so happens that there aren't other islands to explore to the north and south, then we'll be done with just the first two explorers, but I would imagine that there would likely be at least one further island to the north, similar to the Copper island to the south, and I think that it's worth having WB Explorer #2 scout any such island... within reason... if there are like 5 islands up there, then forget it... but one or two are already planned-for as per the up-to-Turn-74 scouting that I displayed in the test game.
Similarly, if there is another "second ring" island to the west of the Copper, I think that we will have more than enough time to check it out before visiting the Stone.
All of these possibilities have been planned for, as has the possibility of no further island to the west of the Copper and us having to spend turns moving back into our Cultural borders after visiting the Stone, as is suggested in LC's image with the southern red path.
So, that's kind of where I stand, but things are also about to get micro-intensive a bit (I don't want to forget to whip the Granary next turn by being too caught-up in exploration, for example), so I'll try not to worry too much about how the exploration goes.
Indeed, I think that we can easily explore the entire first ring even with several second-ring island detours, courtesy of Work Boat Explorer #3... that's the boat that gives us this flexibility to explore our surroundings now so that after exploring, we can directly send 2 Work Boats in opposite directions and see how far we can get before hitting walls of Oceans.
That's the overall rough plan, but plans tend to change the minute that they are implemented, so we'll keep taking screenshots and involving the team as we go.