Skeleton Ships (question & rant)

I'm very confused about how skeleton ships now work?? I've played this game for YEARS, and I took a 5ish-year break. I've come back from this break and am now getting abused by skeleton ships. Im a solo sloop player, and just finished spending 1-2 hours on a gold hoarder voyage as an emissary. After opening the vault and spending 5 minutes moving all my loot to my ship, the second I leave the island, a skeleton ship galleon appears from nowhere. This EXACT thing happened to me yesterday as well; there were no other ships near me. Is this a bug, or did someone genuinely think it was a good idea for skeleton galleons to target sloops?? Im pretty sure it is IMPOSSIBLE to outmanoeuvre, repair or damage these galleons as a sloop, and yes, I did subsequently lose all my loot, just outside of the outpost where I sunk, only to be spawned at a completely different outpost, causing my loot to despawn by the time I got back.