So many skills

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by diminsonsam2

... putting together your comments made me it click now is there a method to narrow down the tons and tons of skills

Several. Experience will take a bit of time to acquire, so let's go for other documents that will tell you about skills needed for a pirate campaign.

GURPS Skill Categories is free for the downloading, and breaks up the great big skill list into a lot of useful categories. Pirates go around on ships, which are vehicles, so they need Vehicle Skills. They take goods by combat, or the threat of combat, so they need Combat/Weapon Skills. They use intimidation and threats a lot, which comes under Social Skills. If they have the same ship for a long time, they need to maintain and repair it, which requires Craft Skills.

If you're willing to spend a small amount of money, there's a GURPS book, Age of Sail Pirate Crew which has a complete pre-built pirate crew. GURPS PDFs are discounted by 40% until December 15th, so it's a good time to buy.

A bit of web searching was also worthwhile. Here's someone's account of how he created a small pirate campaign using the Pirate Crew book.