My wife and I are in our 40's, and we keep up just fine on Tall ships. But you do put in some really long days. You do a lot of 12 hour days.
I think the worst was on a week long camp for high schoolkids. We had a new Capt and 1st Mate. They thought we needed to go from 7:00am till late at night every day for some reason.
One day we were about 20 miles from the entrance of the cove where the boat docked. We tacked back and forth in the same place for hours. Then they decided to head for the barn about dark. You don’t cross 20 miles of shallow, crab pot infested miles in the dark very fast. Needless to say it was very late when we got tied up.