Had another amazing Sea of Thieves experience last night.
My buddy and I were on a sloop. First time I've used the sloop in literally months. Don't even remember the last time I was on one unless it was another crew's sloop that I was boarding to destroy. My friend was trying to finish up the most recent event that tasks you with destroying a certain number of cursed statues in the waters surrounding islands in the game. I had finished it the night before, so was just there to help.
A skull fort popped up shortly into our play session and we decided to go for it, sloop be damned.
A couple of other sloops showed up while we were fighting the skeleton waves. We successfully sunk both of them, but one of them managed to bomb us while I was off the ship and the blast killed my buddy, so our ship sunk as well. I was still alive and made it back to the island and my buddy respawned there as well. Usually if you die while the ship is sinking you respawn in the water where it sunk rather than wherever the new ship spawns. Presumably this is to give you a fighting chance for any loot you were carrying on the ship as it sunk, and possibly also to allow you a chance for revenge against those who sunk you.
Ultimately, we killed the two other players (one from each sloop, I believe) that made it to the island after their ships sunk and were left there alone. We decided to work on the skeleton waves in the hopes that we could get the key from the boss and I could use a PC exploit to teleport it back to our ship, wherever it was. If that failed (works about 50-75% of the time), he'd be there to grab the key and hide it. Didn't quite work out that way. He got cornered by some skeletons and beat to death, leaving me on the island alone. I didn't have my sword on me (I use sniper and shotgun for PvP), which made the prospect of fighting waves alone unwise, so I grabbed a bomb and hid in one of the cannon towers surrounding the island.
Shortly after, I saw a galleon incoming. Luckily for me, they decided to park right between my tower and the tower next to me (the typical parking spot for maximum defensive capabilities). Unluckily for me, I saw they were clearing out the towers. They cleared the other one first, but a few seconds later I heard someone swimming to my tower.
I figured it was now or never, so I grabbed my bomb and jumped out the opposite side of the tower from the ladder the enemy was climbing up. Somehow, no one noticed me as I swam to their ship. I got bold and, rather than releasing the bomb below their ship and letting it drift up and explode, I climbed up their ladder. Didn't see anyone, so I ran the bomb down to their hold, lit the fuse (this was added a month or so ago...if you light it, it goes boom in five seconds), and ran like hell.
I survived, but the blast alerted their entire crew. There was, at most, one guy on the ship with me, but for whatever reason he was just taking potshots at me with the pistol instead of getting close and fighting me, which let me camp the ship's ladders. I killed the first guy that climbed up with a short range shotgun blast. I saw two guys in the water so I switched to my rifle and shot one of them, killing him instantly as the other guy climbed up the ladder. Swapped back to my shotgun and blasted him, and although it wasn't an instant kill, it did knock him off the ship. The fourth guy finally got some balls and came after me, but he ate my shotty and died in one shot. I capped it off by jumping into the water as their ship sank and sniping the third guy that had escaped my previous wrath.
In another bit of luck, they apparently had several bombs in their crow's nest that floated to the surface after their ship went down. Even more lucky, three of their players spawned in right as the bombs floated to the surface, so I shot the bombs and killed one of them instantly. I didn't know about the third guy at the time (found out about him a bit later), but I did chase the second guy to shore and gunned him down.
My buddy got back with our ship a short time later, at which point that third guy I didn't know about started shooting our ship with cannons. Unfortunately for him, our cannon had a line of sight to his tower so I just blasted him a couple of times and finished him off.
We beat the fort shortly later and cashed out, but that was a damned good time. Sinking a galleon literally by yourself is always an amazing experience, and one that doesn't happen terribly often.