The ports themselves: What are the benefits of OSRS gold upgrading? I've noticed that most upgrades are quite expensive. I've tried upgrading my office to unlock a 3rd ship but it's just too slow to collect bamboo.
In the ideal scenario, you'll want to focus on the upgrades that will unlock new ships for obvious reasons to ensure you're getting it right. I'm of the opinion that every upgrade is worth it (except in the cases there's more than one upgrade, you can unlock all of them, but you can only have one activated at a time which is why you should choose wisely).
Regarding the team, I have four bureaucrats (well the ideal is getting only the best that are available at the moment, I'm not able to recall the names of others so I chose bureaucrat - basically the crew member who increases the numbers of other crew members) crew members; And there are 4 Morale, 5 Seafaring and four Combat crew members 4 Special crew members (the members that are unlocked via special voyages like those of Feral Chimera)
This crew setup has always worked well for me, however there are probably better configurations. I'll likely get rid of Merchants and Merchants shortly and will soon be able to get more special crew members or something as I honestly rarely use Merchants. They were only useful when I needed to collect trade items to create the armours.
As for the Captains I didn't really care about the Speed statistic. I have 1 Morale, 2 Seafaring and two Combat Captains of the most prestigious tier available right now. (actually I believe that I've gained access to an upgrade recently, but I'm not able to cheap OSRS GP locate any of the new Capts yet)