I've been sailing for a while now, ever since sailing was in its early days pre-sail skill and I love how much improvement it has seen. Huge kudos to ActionReplay for being an amazing dev to the sea-related stuff. Whenever they have an update in hands, I'm super excited.
Here's my feedback on some of the content:
-Time:
Sailing is a very time-consuming activity, which is fine itself. I don't want to see it getting too "hak-n-slashy", the pace while sailing feels fine and gives so much time to rp and interact. What I would love to see is some quality of life regarding the preparation of sailing. Currently for me, I waste so much time preparing everything for sailing. So I have to dontact people to see who's available, check which ships are available in some ports, then I have to rent it, go back to my room, grab the appropriate weapons and appropriate ammunition. Then I have to make sure I have enough INCREDIBLY HEAVY repairing material to get me going for a few hours without having to dock and repair. I cast freedom of movement, head back to whatever ship was available, load my sailing gear, buff my crew, perhaps a ritual, board the ship and place all the ammo and repair material in a storage or barrel, praying it doesn't crash and lose it all. Only then we can finally go off sailing!
Possible improvements;
*Ammunition. Right now it's kind of a nightmare to keep them. They only stack up to 50 and you'll have: light javelins+1,+2,+3,+4,+5, heavy javelins +1,+2,+3,+4,+5 and the firepot +1,+2,+3,+4,+5. Luckily most sailors don't have to worry about powder stone since we don't have access to ships that can have a bombard. The ammo is by far the most annoying part, as it's super vital for sailing. I had to recently simply give up on light javs and never sail a 2-persons ship simply because of space management. Allowing ammo to stack up to 100 would go a looong way into making storage and prep for sailing much more pleasant.
- Repairing mats. I'll focus on the skill I chose, which was tailoring and oh boy, I should really have listened to people who told me to not get tailoring for ship repair... You'd think cotton is so easy to get that it would be no problem right? Nooo, you need a stack of 40 cotton to get only 5 large cloth, so you run through cotton like it's nothing and you don't find an easy availability of cloth repair inside NPC ships you board as you find with wood. And the weight of the cloth is simply unbearable, it's heavier than the wood iirc, which is pretty silly and you need to make the mat from raw cotton, which requires work. If cloth would be lighter and requires less cotton would go a long way improving quality of life.
-Short-lease ships:
These are the backbones of every sailor. I can't thank enough for the availability of ships and their qualities. If it wasn't for these wonderful ships, I'm pretty sure sailing would be dead. Can't wait to see more of these with varitied themes and quirks!
-Flagships:
They great, whenever you're on a smaller ship and spot one of those, it's a huge risk going against them. And as should be, they require a larger number of crew, making it harder to sail them all the time without proper preparation, that way smaller ships have more freedom and space in the sea. This is such a smart design.
-Long-lease ships:
Ok, these are a problem currently. For some reason, only Crow's Nest and Sencliff long-lease ships historically see good ownership. You never see the First and Second sisters sailing properly, nor the Blightkiln or Deceitful Mermaid (DM ships?). Which is a shame, since there are some incredible crews out there who would love to have a ship to tailor and make a name for. I sometimes feel that part of the problem is the eagerness to bid on a ship on characters that aren't even sailors, nor are part of groups that sail. The way sail works, it requires a heavy investment in sailing skill and having a group of people who have done the same in lieu of a very specific flavor of rp. I would like to see long-lease ships having some sort of requirement for ownership, such as having a minimum number of soft sail points, or perhaps a faction with a minimum number of combined sail to bid on it. I'm not sure 100% on what would be the best way. But these ships definitely deserve some action.
-Loot!
I feel that in the past months there was a nerf on map pieces. As I understand people were heavily farming areas such as stonehold and duergar fortress library with 127 lore for map pieces. As a result, it's incredibly rare to find map pieces in bookshelves now, which is bad, since in some NPC ship designs, it was supposed to be the way of getting map pieces, while on others it can be digging or chests. I think these bookshelves and bookstacks in ships could have an improved % of map pieces as it used to be. I think in general, it could be a little easier to get these map pieces, as most people who sail are not on dedicated crews or only sail once in a while and it can be hard for the majority to actually come across 6 map pieces and get the amazing pirate treasure chest in a whole day of sailing. And sometimes even when you do, you still need to be lucky with the content and then roll/share for the best content of it! So you can sail with some people and find 3 map pieces and the following days, have a different set of people sailing with you and find other map pieces, it's a bit awkward and unhelpful towards larger and more mixed crews. Realistically, if you don't have a min/max crew focusing on map pieces, you'll very rarely get pirate chests.
-Flags:
They are great, people should definitely use them more
-Shouting:
Why are people scared of shouting in the same quadrant? Put a disguise on and interact, people!
-Crashes:
Don't you hate when you have a nice cargo of treasure and a barrel full of 25 pages of loot and server crashes? 
-PvP:
Pretty good! I just think there should be some reward for sinking enemy PC ships as a way to reward flagships hunting pirates, or pirates hunting PCs. Something like a 50 treasure cargo units per class size of ship.
I was going to mention more but the post is long enough as it is, so I want to hear if others agree or not to their own experiences sailing.