Let's talk about close range ship-to-ship combat, and blended ship encounters

I recently reviewed The Ghosts of Saltmarsh as that seems to be the go-to source for 5e ship combat. I liked a lot of what I saw but found it lacking.

What I don't like is that ship combat seems mutually exclusive to regular combat encounters. All of the players acting as a single ship (for the most part) really reduces individual player agency, and overlooks the variety of interesting spells and abilities that could be really interesting to play out.

I suspect the reason for this relates to realism: 1) Most IRL ship combat would resolve before the ships were in range for PCs to use most of their own abilities. 2) Most of these ships have huge crews, and dealing with initiative for all of them would be impractical.

That said, I suspect many of us would be happy to forego this realism (if that's not you stop reading).

In my case, my five non-sailor players are on a 100ft sailing ship, and supporting a single NPC captain (who is the only crew). Terribly unrealistic, I know, but I haven't heard any complaints yet.

I'd love to introduce some close range ship-to-ship encounters where where:

1. Players must prioritize between downing the ship or the individual enemies on it.
2. Enemy ships(s) could get close enough to board their ship (either via jumping, a boarding device or assisted by spells/skills). Or vice-versa; players boarding enemy ships.
3. The players could each take a ship action instead of their regular action (possibly just ballistas, maybe more)

Proposed Homebrew:

• Use the stat blocks from 5e source material (mainly Ghosts of Saltmarsh) as needed for ships.

• Run it like a regular encounter where initiative count is per player/enemy, and the ships take no turns

• Players can spend their action taking one of the ship's actions, but no two players can take the same ship action twice in a round; Only one player can move, each ship-weapon can be used once per turn.

• Boarding another ship would have no special rules, whatever regular abilities or resources would close that gap apply here

• Ship HP: Just use Hull strength as overall ship HP, or include per-component HPs if that level of detail is sought (and related damage effects).

• Movement: Unless the ships are matched in speed, you kind of need to just hand-wave this one and work in your own mechanics or narrative devices as to how ships would catch and maintain, or lose, pace with each other.

• If a player falls in the water, and they aren't rescued by the end of the round, they'd be lost in the water until the end of the encounter as the boats are moving. Prob need to include some sort of throw rope action here.

Curious to hear feedback or if anyone has a source (official or not) on a more fleshed out way of doing this. Also would love to hear what you've tried and lessons learned!