Quote Originally Posted by Vyrerus View Post
I don't feel like it was generous at all. Carvallain refers to having, "engineers." It's also a world wherein magic exists, and Alisaie makes the claim when you run into the Sirensong Sea that, "It could be another "spice trader" employing magicks to stop our ship and steal our cargo."

If there's magic in our magical world strong enough to stop a ship, then there's magic enough to make a ship go even faster. Real world reference was hot channel conditions, in other words.
Every ship with an engine is going to have an engineer, but that doesn't magically make it go faster. Even if "magic that actively makes your ship faster" was more than something that you just made up, the fact remains that we are already given a time already of how long it takes to get from Limsa Lominsa to Doma for everyone else. We're not told of mages who are actively channeling spells to boost the ship and if it was a thing you'd think everyone would be doing it.

A magitek engine would help going against the wind or the current, but it won't necessarily boost a ship to lightning speeds (comparatively) if it wasn't designed for it to begin with.

Quote Originally Posted by Vyrerus View Post
Part of the issue with discussing the time bubble is that they are always so very shy about mentioning time or distance.
It's so that they can avoid discussions like the one we're having. GRR Martin even said the same thing:
The reason I am never specific about dates and distances is precisely so that people won't sit down and do this sort of thing.

My suggestion would be to put away the ruler and the stopwatch, and just enjoy the story.
Ultimately we have no context for distances or hull speeds or currents or weather maps so taking "UK to Japan" distance from our world and applying A LOT of guesswork on when they are and aren't turning on an engine we never even see doesn't give us anything to go off of. All we have a reference for is one line from the EE.


For everything else, the writers have no need to correctly calculate time and have written the plot completely ignoring it. Like I said before, this could be a fun exercise, but you're looking into something with more care than the writers did so trying to be super serious about it won't lead to any satisfaction and no one's going to agree on the same things.