User blog comment:Woohoot/Overhyped Grandline/@comment-4899461-20150126145616/@comment-10543621-20150126234423

Good point. I guess one thing people (including myself) tend to forget is that a pirate first and foremost sails the sea. That in itself should be one of the greatest challenges a Pirate can face. Afterall, if they can't conquer the sea, they can't have any adventures. It's just that as a story, it's obviously more interesting to see developments and interaction between characters, fights and whatnot. Showing how they sail the sea all the time wouldn't be very interesting.

In a way this would be true since they did see some pretty wacky stuff while sailing. Perhaps the reputation of the Grandline being fearsome can be attributed to the sea itself, and in a way, pirates that do manage to survive these conditons and thrive in it would be of a certain calibre just by virtue of their ability to tough it out.

STILL, we have seen several scenes where the crew just sail along happily completely relaxed. It remains to be seen though, but based on how fearsome the New World has been described to be, I'd expect this sort of relaxed sailing to happen far less often, if not none at all.