ERAS Update

No way to play for Portugal (as in nation quest), but you can sail under a Portuguese flag.  There are also no current settlements.  MK had wanted to add a town somewhere on the continent, but I don't know what the status of that is.

But to add something like that is not trivial.  Locations need to be added and defined in the scripts, models allocated, characters added in the game startup functions, worldmap/travel coordinates set up, worldmap model and locator tags updated...many things I'm probably forgetting at the moment.  We did it once when adding Boddon's Landing, but I've since forgotten the many details, though I probably have notes about the process somewhere.

That ship is very fast.  I think you have to get a fast ship, but also with somewhat long range cannons, in decent quantity so you can slow it down and allow you to catch it and board.  In ERAS, a decent option is a VOC Escort.  It is not as fast, but has a decent quantity of decent cannons, and you will have to pepper the sails with chainshot to slow it down, before it gets out of range.  There are other options, but the VOC is a fairly common ship to be found, with good speed and decent number/caliber cannons and is only a 5th rater, so can be sailed by a lower level character.  Also, try to get your crew experience in gunnery up, with a good Gunner officer to boost your stats; that improves accuracy of your shots.