My crew and I have been struggling with some things. So we broke from the books a bit and have created our own Homebrew hybrid. The first book we played exactly as written, but Raiders we changed up. Reading about Harke in Rickety Squibs our crew didn't want to have to do the accounting of coming back and paying him until he debt was paid off... so since it was near Halloween we went to the retired Society Drakard manor module and rewrote it. We took out the nonessential npcs and replaced them with haunting house type monsters i.e. spider swarms, burning skeletons and etc... Had Harke wanting to retire and let his younger apprentice take over. In exchange for clearing the haunted mansion on the cliff, he squibbed the ship. It also allowed me to give my PC's some flavored magic items tailored to their concept.
In the ship to ship combat, it was pretty much wash, rinse and repeat. It got tedious since it was the same combat over and over with just different names for the ship and captain. Same for the villages. So after taking the Rock, my shackles crew discovered an island and explored it... its actually the shore to sea module which has is designed for level 6 and has a bit of a kuthulu feel to it. It also allowed me to give the pcs a bit more gear tailored to them and plunder for succeeding in completing it. They are currently at Mancatcher cove but when the Shackles Books are not providing what my party needs I think its only fair to stop and explore or do something a bit different for them