The chance of the captain and first mate just being drunk or really irresponsible ("the sea is big, what's the worst that can happen?") seems way more likely to me here than some nefarious plan. I just don't see what would be gained from it.
The various cable cuts related to russian ships are definitely suspicious though. There the motive would be clear - it sends a threatening message to other countries about how vulnerable their infrastructure is, potentially making them less likely to stand up to russian aggression. And the cost to fix the cables is much higher than the cost of a low-medium chance the (old, leaking, close to decommissioning) ship gets impounded.
Ceph is great, we run critical infra at work on proxmox with ceph. Very reliable in my experience. It was definitely helpful for me to have ceph experience from my home cluster when starting there.