From your pictures, I noticed that the ships were all mounted on square bases instead of individual hulls, which was an import from Black Seas’ second cousin, Armada, and should have greatly sped the gameplay up and tightened the measurements. With bases, the Black Seas maneuvering is streamlined, and its initiative system is the best I have seen for clarity of activation order since it allows players to somewhat influence the next turn's order while still having a random component.
The hosts ships were beautiful, but I was not going to paint, base, and rig the ships for myself.
As to the rigging, with alternate flats or papercraft silhouettes you can easily play Black Seas without anything apart from the core book. All of the statistics for ships from that period and the main four national fleet specifics are included in the book so any ship cards with modifiers can be put together with a little effort. With the Hold Fast supplement, you also get the national characteristics for another half dozen historically smaller navies.
I have been meaning to put up a comparison between Armada and Black Seas breaking down their differences and similarities, but I have too much invested into Armada currently to attempt putting Black Seas proxies on the table anytime soon.
