Well I started a new pirate a few weeks ago (Scout, in honor of the To Kill a Mockingbird character) and decided from the start to keep his levels even for all skills. By even I mean that all skills are within 1 level of each other. This is not exactly a radical approach but for me it was like doing homework for subjects I hate, for hours on end.
Then...
It became tolerable... and what was kind of fun was that you can't take this approach and work a skill for very long... you level up and BANG move on to the next skill.
At this point, I'm really enjoying the approach and have no intention of diverting from even levels on this guy. He's a noto 27 with all levels either at 14 or 15... which for a skill like grenades, you can arrive at from scratch in an hour or so. What has made it much more time consuming is swiveling back over to potions, fishing, sailing. and cannon constantly.
Also, since he's leveled skills so many times for a sub-30 noto pirate, his health points are quite high for this level (almost 1900). I think he's definitely the strongest pirate I've head under noto 30, hands-down, tho I've had 3 who had lost sword at this point. He won't even qualify to get something like that because his sword is at level 15.
Anyway... that's my little leveling experiment write-up. :)