Hey, Im on the last one, been at it for over a year now. Can recommend it, it's a good read. Wont spoil :)

some 20 years back: Suse 7.0, my first PC, reinstalled it every week, cause me dumb dumb back then and it was not very easy to use as well.

well, since its in the Forgotten Realms settings, access to cannons are rare and limited - and really expensive - where a small island of a weird gnome sect in the far south west of the continent hold the monopoly to guns and cannons. Mostly, mages and other magical users would be employed to either power the sails and/or defend from attacks.

as for the maneuvering part, one can roleplay a ship chase, running mages dry, and then the more powerful ship has the chance to get away or attack the remaining fighting crew as one would. And since a ship will fight for its very existence, unless the opponent are slavers, every man will fight, which shouldn't be fought out unless you group all combatants into one "group" and roll for them to see how they are doing.

More ideas:

• Slavers are a topic in such games. One could think about the wealth distribution among the crew, among certain factions, regions, and flesh out the region accordingly.
• Check the campaign guide for trades countries would ship overseas, what items could they want to smuggle?
• What kind of taboos exist on land, which your crew might flee from and become Privateers?
• How are Pirates supplied?
• Where is their landing port, safe haven? How is it defended when the main part of the fleet is gone? Access to repairs? How do they recruit additional crew?
• What enemies are there? What "Kingpins" of the Underworld (can also be intelligent Monsters) exist, what foes? (how a about a beholder "kraken"?)
• How are the landlubbers acting towards the crew, what kind of people are there? Do you have primitives, voodoo shamans and a carribbean setting or do you prefer the privateer British setting, with more refinements and fortified towns - or something in between?

Source: FR Campaign Guide & Drizzt Books

notable mentions to check out:

• (TSR/2nd ED): Pirates of the Fallen Stars
• (D20): Corsair the definitive Guide to Ships / Gareth-Michael Skarka

When I chose to learn it in high school, it was the expression of getting a new challenge for a autistically gifted, yet mind numbingly bored kid. I had stopped due to life and my frustration learning Kanji, which I'm working on it now in Wanikani - that helped tremendously. I've come to integrate a lot of Japanese ways into my life since then - food, pop culture, karate, kendo and various other things. Nowadays I picked up on it again for the desire to read more things in the original language to skip translation errors, and later to travel and interact with locals. It might be fun to surprise people that one is not the average 煩い米兵の外人 (loud american foreigner).

yes, mindfulness is very important when it come to the realization of what exactly we are putting into us. We kill to survive. Any animal does (to my knowledge). But we should also have the necessary respect for the thing we have to kill. The question I always had, before I turned to vegetarianism for beliefs, ethics, and climate was one hard one to answer: Is it better to kill 100 chickens or one cow and use it completely? Especially when trying to see it from all 3 prior viewpoints. But in this day and age, where we are unable to raise our food ourselves, I just think that we should all use our resources very efficiently, and change our future to be sustainable.

And just as a disclaimer, I don't promote vegetarianism, I personally don't care what you eat, since it's such a personal thing. Live your life, just be diligent about it. So many people run on autopilot nowadays and sadly, it shows in my humble experience.

I (re-)started learning Japanese again after a 20 year break, from when I had it in school. I tried Duolingo for a month, but I grew frustrated with the new design and how it assumed you should know stuff - which was explained afterwards. I ordered Genki (a textbook) and started learning with Wanikani, and that really worked for me. I like the SRS system, and am trying to get into Japanese books by now. (edit: doing WK for ~6months, 2x daily)

This is what worked for me - it doesn't necessarily will work for you. Just shop around and see what you like (eg: paid instructor, online learning, textbooks) and can stick to. Then it's only a matter of time until you pick up the language.

eh. nice try. I'll stay lurkin'.