I'm currently preparing to run this. Some things I've done in preparing that I'd love feedback on:
Rum Rations: I've seen many posts about the lethality of Rum Rations, so nerfed them. They now do 1d3-1 Con damage (which can be healed normally), but the damage also resets to right before the next day's Rum Rations. This way the Con damage still has the potential to affect their jobs the next day, but will not become a never ending hangover that eventually kills the entire crew.
NPC crew & Jobs: I've actually been going through, assigning jobs to NPCs as if they were PCs and running the skill checks/Con checks. This has been generating a fairly realistic daily set of punishments, and crew members that spend the night with a full sleep. Opening the door for interaction with different crew members at night. Crazto to do this you say? Not so bad rolling some dice and taking noted while watching baseball lol
I don't remember who the original poster was, but he/she provided much more detailed backstory to all the crew members and introduced a few new members such as Artful Roger and Breaker Bones. The entire crew is much more fleshed out and hopefully more interesting to interact with.
Question: I see people talking about cutting out ship actions on a good portion of days, but how do the players go about bonding (or alienating) crew members before the end?