The problem is they have hundreds of accounts ready to go at the cheaters disposal. It's a part of the subscription benefits. I'm referring to the obvious cheats that were detectable but now are rampant again. While they are not teleporting through cannons, they have an equally powerful way to board now and it is unwinnable.
I'm going to estimate that there are on my stamp less than 100-200 active players at peak hours (being generous here) who are playing hourglass, for all ship sizes. This number steadily drops throughout the non peak hours until there only a handful of players.
I constantly see streamers being targeted through this game mode, as it's fragile and easy to do so. There is no escape other than to switch stamps with a VPN and they will likely run into the same issue as it's easy to target.
A single player can target this game mode, achieving 100+ streaks without being dealt with. I've seen this live on stream with a solo reaching over 110 on a galleon.
At the time of this post, I've met the cheater I described again on an alternate account, after his last account was banned. The original name was banned and they are already on a new account targeting the mode and using NAL sails on the account. This is the fifth time I can confirm I have met this same individual. He mentions who else he is specifically targeting, some of which have a strong presence in the community. Egregious blatant cheating should be handled immediately. These people are not trying to to go 'under the radar' they are vocal about themselves cheating admitting so in text, voice chat and stating the reasons for doing so. The player base is suffering at the expense of angry individuals seeking revenge for 'injustice'.
It would not be hard to monitor this specific mode daily to prevent this.