If you don't want to change the battle timer how about we look at chasers.
During that battle I was in the faster ship doing 12.3kn while he was probably around 11.8kn.
Admittedly over the course of an hour he got my sails to 85% and I eventually turned around to get it over with. It was only the chasers that gave the attacker a chance to catch up.
I know that historically chasers were used in this exact fashion and I know the position of devs on making this game realistic. But this is a game, one that I have dropped 500+ hours into. This is an amazing game and I enjoy *almost* every minute of it. This type of battle is extremely uninteractive for both parties. The attacker is hitting space bar every 30 sec and the defender is doing nothing, absolutely nothing and just watching the timer get reset. I can't say this isn't enjoyable because everyone plays the way they want. Maybe this will be different when there is type of reinforcement in the form of ships or towers and this argument is just a waste of air. Surely you understand where I'm coming from.
There are numerous ways to fix/change this.