I have galleons in the water on 11 different shards as I'm working on training up fishing on some of my characters. For the last week or so I have been trying to make sure I refresh the boats at least once per day just to make sure I don't lose any of them or all the stinky fish and MIBs in their holds and for a few days now have been making a note in my spreadsheet where I keep track of character skills of the date and time I last refreshed the ships.
Today I got a little behind on refreshing them and for several shards I was at about the 30-hour mark since I'd last refreshed them. (I had been trying to not go longer than 24 hours before today.) I noticed that on three shards, the galleonswere already at the "somewhat worn" mark, while all the rest were still just "slightly worn." Unfortunately, I got distracted before I finished refreshing the last couple on the list and now can't remember exactly which were the first two shards where I found the galleons had already gotten to the "somewhat worn" stage. (I think it might have been Europa and GL.) However, I do know with 100% certainty that on Origin the galleon was at the "somewhat worn" mark just a few minutes ago. I refreshed it at 4:15 pm MT yesterday and when I checked it at 10:30 pm MT tonight, it was "somewhat worn. That's just over 30 hours. Strangely, though, the galleon on Sonoma, which I refreshed yesterday at 4:20 pm MT and checked tonight at 10:35 pm MT was still just "slightly worn."
So....what does this mean? I really don't know, except that things are not happening consistently across shards with regard to galleon decay and in some cases, the decay is occurring too quickly. (According to information on UOGuide, the galleons shouldn't hit the "somewhat worn" mark until 3 days after they were last refreshed.
http://www.uoguide.com/Boats .)
I will try to keep better notes tomorrow (or Friday) when I next refresh the boats to try to be more exact about which shards seem to be showing faster decay. Just like when we first noticed this, I have a suspicion that some shards are not operating under the same rules as others on this issue. If more people could get in on watching to see what's going on with galleon decay (and house decay), it might be interesting to see if there's any correlation between the shards that seem to have faster decay and shards that might currently be unavailable for transfers, as I seem to recall one or two people in the last week posting about not being able to transfer to another shard, which is usually indicative of the origination and destination shards running under different publishes. Or we could at least develop a list of which shards really need extra-careful watching of galleons to make sure people don't lose gathered resources, quest crates, and other items they are storing in galleon holds.
However, I do know that the "in danger" state is still lasting between 3 and 14 hours, instead of the normal 7 hours. 
