In a way, the timing couldn't be worse. Pirates were busy with double rep activities trying to get the most for their the time on their countdown clocks.
Neon went to his last activity expecting to lose the patron fight, but not alarmed because in the past, with other pirates, losing the first fight meant funny stuff would happen afterwards.
However, two high level pirates from Dark Archive, who saw him come get the idol from the South Idol, had a different perspective and followed him to help him kill Patron.
OK, about the weird stuff:
the first weird was returning for a second fight after losing the first, and when I boarded the ship the green circle appeared around the chest and the game told me to go pick a sword.
the second weird was Patron fighting me (but no yellow ghosts) and doing it so slow and weakly--that I beat him.
in another type of weird, you get knocked out, the ghosts and patron go away and after you are revived you get the green circle around the treasure chest.
These discoveries were made because I decided to LOSE to patron so I could keep going back, both for stress relief and also for rep for killing the ghosts.