To cross from one ship to the other, you will get caught up between the dueling deckhands, causing you to mark an HP. Point out to the players that as they cross, they see one of the pirates swing on a rope while boarding their ship, allowing them to remain unharmed. A player can roll against the difficulty to board their ship by rope swinging.

Both the player's ship and the pirate's ship have Countdown 20, where rolling with fear or failing decreases your own ship's countdown by 1, while rolling with hope or succeeding decreases the pirate's ship's countdown by 1. A critical success by player or GM decreases the opposing side by 3. At the start of the encounter, roll a d8; the ship that was ambushed loses that much from its countdown. If one ship ever has a 5-or-more less countdown than the other ship, that ship can disengage and flee. Getting down to 0 countdowns means your ship sinks and you and your crew are captured. Each player can use experiences that can be interpreted as being useful for repair or sabotage to roll against the difficulty, and on a success, increase their ship's countdown by 3 or decrease the opposing ship's countdown by 3; a failure results in the opposite effect. They can do this once per experience that's applicable and must describe exactly what they are doing.

When either ship reaches countdown 5, have a massive wave crash into the ship; every player or adversary from the opposing ship must make an agility reaction roll dif (15) or be tossed overboard until the scene ends.