Forgive me if someone already suggested this, but based on the little coding details I learned in the other thread, I thought that a possibility for more gold, without increasing the amount carried, would be to use existing dig spots as "banks". Basically, you'd use a dig spot to dig up a chest, and then decide how much of your gold to put in it/take out (up to 65k per chest - assuming that is the magic gold number). This would allow pirates to have more gold without (maybe?) major code changes, and would give dig spots another use.
Plus, burying treasure is very piratey...