Looks awesome! I bet if you took a knife or a metal wire brush to the stir sticks before turning them into forbidden pasta, you could carve some additional texture into them. Assuming they aren't so thin they would just snap, that is.

For the base part, it might be a good idea to go with modpodge rather than glue, same basic stuff, it tends to work slightly better because you also end up reducing a warping risk with them. With the type of boat, you might also want to make any future ones with pieces of wooden dowel for the front and back, making it a bit more realistic for the size with a look like a main beam that would have been used in construction of it, and you can even do things for interesting bowsprits on them...one easy one is to grab a cheap chess set and use part of the knight fitted to the front. And if you have access to them, baby wipes/wet wipes dried out before adding glue tend to work better than paper or cardstocks.

Nice and simple.

Looks good! I built a Corsair ship years ago for MESBG from the An Hour of Wolves and Shattered Shields tutorial. I was pretty pleased with how it turned out. I really like the way these boats look on the table. If you want to increase your time investment dramatically for a marginal increase in realism and esthetic, you could start by building frames and adding the hull planking to that.

Return the NFT'S mister!!!