Suggestion: reduce the size of the Crew needed for all ships by -1 (to a minimum of 2), or at least of Galleons/Flagships.
The larger ships (Galleons/Flagships), requiring 5 or 6 Crew respectively, makes them incredibly difficult to regularly/effectively use in practice without relying on a core crew made from an OOC clique or friendgroup all rolling up premade Sailing Builds. Getting 6 random people together who are willing to gimp their builds by taking SF/ESF Sail is incredibly difficult, and requiring that many people to sync playtimes and schedules to make things work is an incredible stressor.
While 33 Ranks + Gear is sufficient to fill gaps in the roster (although it's somewhat rare to even run into that degree of investment outside of Sencliff or pre-arranged player groups, too,) the higher level Sailing content is incredibly gatekept behind consistently hitting 90-100 avg. Sail - which means you're going to need several Dedicated Sailing Builds on hand to trend up the average. For smaller ships (the galleys/brigs) this isn't so bad, but on larger ships it means that there's a great amount of stress on every dedicated sailing build to consistently show up anytime anyone wishes to do something, and to constantly remain present and accountable for a very prolonged period of time (since the average sailing session is ~1-4 RL hours long, for most people.) This added degree of stress makes being part of a larger ship's administrative group/core crew remarkably less fun.
Reducing the crew size needed, even marginally, will make them not only infinitely more useable and easier to sail, it will make sailing them substantially more enjoyable an experience as dedicated sail builds no longer feel 100% tied to showing up every time, all the time. Which can only be seen as a good thing: general content is meant to be accessible, explorable, and enjoyable. Reducing this barrier to entry helps further all three goals.