Dedicated thread on the forums can be found here now -
https://www.seaofthieves.com/forum/topic/59176/sea-of-thieves-server-instability-updates-may-16th
"We have now completed our emergency maintenance and the game is back online. The previously mentioned features have been turned off temporarily and we will continue to monitor game performance. We will assess the situation in the morning to put together a plan on bringing those features back into the game. Thanks for your patience."
If you're encountering errors of any kind in game, please send a report via Support to let the devs know whether there are still issues being encountered.
Also from the crews mega thread -
Due to a high volume of AlmondBeard errors, we have temporarily removed the Open/Closed Crews feature as well as the invisible underwater gamer tags, and give/take feature while we investigate the cause. We’ll be meeting first thing tomorrow to further assess the situation and work out a plan for reinstating these features. We understand the frustration this has caused, and will keep the community up to date with more information as we have it.
Please use the mega thread to discuss the maintenance issues today, as well as the resulting temporary removal of the new features.
https://www.seaofthieves.com/forum/topic/58930/mega-thread-open-and-closed-crews/45?page=2
14:45 yesterday servers were offline due to issues caused by the handing over items to other pirates
Servers were back online an hour later.
10 hours ago pirates were still experiencing almondbeard errors
8 hours ago another maintenance window was scheduled due to almondbeard errors
16:15 PDT another maintenance window was scheduled and - 'During this window we’ll temporarily remove the Open/Closed Crews feature as well as the invisible underwater gamer tags. We’ll post more information as we have it.'
2 hours ago maintenance was complete and the game online again.
Game performance is being monitored.
Almondbeard.... you scurvy dog....
10:30am BST
https://www.reddit.com/r/Seaofthieves/comments/8jq1mj/almondbeard_error_update/dz29fn0/