I really don't understand the fuss here. We've played several games, which had ships lost due to hull damage and other ships lost to crew damage.

The rules and diagrams seem pretty straightforward to me and our group; regardless of which damage track, the number of available actions is the one to the right of the longest damage track. This seems to make sense, as you either don't have the crew left to perform a number of actions, or the hull is so damaged that the crew is "busy elsewhere."

I agree the rules may not be clearly written:
When a ship is damaged, use the leftmost symbol still uncovered by damage counters in both the Ship Damage and Crew Damage track.
but Interpretation #3 applies as can be seen by the diagram. Perhaps if you think of laying the damage counters closer to the midline, you then see there is only one crew-action number visible, as shown in the diagram on page 29.

Cheers!