Thanks for the suggestions, everybody.

In the end, one of those friends who was attending could not come, so we were 5 people with four ships. I opted out, choosing to have my friends with one ship each while I handled turn order, rules, wind, and such.

The experience was not as good as it could have been, but that has a lot more to do with my very bad choices regarding terrain placement and playing field size than with the number of ships. I will learn a lot from this.

Thanks again!