OK, so I have to admit it: I'm a noob and I've done some noob things, the first of which was which ship I started with. Now that I've played the game a little, I wish I chose the howler over the sloop, and, unfortunately, there is no reset button, so there's no going back!
The one thing that I have thought of that might help a noob that's made this sort of wrong decision would be the ability to sell ships back to shipwrights. Of course, this may be of benefit to more advanced players too, but if it was done right, I think it wouldn't unbalance the game if done right. IMHO, the best way to keep the balance right is shipwrights will buy ships off players at some globally fixed discount (80%?,90%) of the base cost of materials, gold, and upgrades used to make the ship.
Some care would be needed to get the discount percent correct: If the discount percent is chosen correctly, it should give new players a shot at changing their early game plan, with only a slight drawback due to the discount, but for experienced players selling ships would just mean they have one less ship, with the paid gold only being enough to buy a worse ship then they had already had.
The only concern I can see is making sure this feature can't be exploited by voodoo cards that either exist now (I haven't read them all, so I don't know) or any voodoo that may be added to the game later. If a player had voodoos that made making ship building cheaper than ship selling costs, they could profit massively through a buy/sell ship cycle. Therefore, the ship buying discount should be greater than any discount on ship building that could be gained by voodoo, and voodoo's that discount ship building should not be stackable (eg 1 voodoo=20% off for 24 hr+ another voodoo=20% off for 24 hr should not give 40% off for 24 hr, but maybe should get 20% off for 48 hr)
Sounds like a good idea that may help out us noobs?