I got through chapter 17 without spending time boosters and teleports (or, I think I did spend a few teleports to make room, but I didn't teleport ships).
I have a level 30 Bee which I found helped a lot moving faster through the chapter. (I built my Bee in chapter 14 as I wanted it for guest races in chapter 15+.)
I ended up spending mostly portal profits instead of producing the goods in the portal as they were expensive to make (and this is the only use of portal profits in this chapter).
I built an even amount of all ships (I had 12 of each of the small ships). Through most of the chapter I was overproducing the pearls I think, but at the end of the chapter I ended up with very few excess items. If I had teleported like
@Enevhar Aldarion then I think I would have moved faster through the research in the beginning but slower in the end. I might have got the level 4 portal a little faster by teleporting which would have saved me a little time overall, but I found it easier (and it saved teleports) to just build the same amount of each ship.
As soon as I had unlocked the small ships and finished the quest that required me to have all 9 large ships I sold the large ships off. If you are only collecting once or twice a day then I think it is better to keep the large ships though.
I was able to run a lot of the shorter productions on the small ships which I think helped a lot. I had periods where I was able to run the 15 min productions for some hours. And generally ran the shortest productions that I could.