A cursed item found in barrels in a similar way you find cursed cannon balls.
The item is a consumable that when used on a ship causes a speed boost and the reason why skeleton ships dont rely on the wind.
The sails will have a ghostly ferryman style aura around them whilst this is active alerting any ship being chased that they have used the speed curse. A ship being chased can see they used this curse from the sails therefore can use a speed curse if they have one to maintain their distance.
This means that if you stock up and spend the time gathering all the items on islands and flotsams you could be in a position to chase a ship and catch up to them quickly instead of a long drawn out chase.
On the other hand this also means if you stocked up and dont want to be caught by players you can easily escape.
Crews who are equally stocked up etc will provide an interesting chase indeed.
Whoever has the most speed boosts is the fastest ship. This will drastically change the ship dynamic.
Speed boosts are still RNG like cursed cannon balls but it means that having preparation and actually stocking your ship up will massively help you out. So a speed boost is not going to be massively common but it will allow a stocked up ship to do some honest piracy, even against a sloop sailing against the wind!
Before you worry too about this being too OP.
Lets not forget we still have anchor balls etc and lots od other cursed balls so this doesnt mean you cant escape.
