Yes you can.
And you could do it with +11 sailors too.

+12 supports are often even superior to elites due to their higher secondary stat growth.

For example a Elite engineer will have 13 in engine growth but his repair and restore is only 9 while you can get a +12 engineer with +11 or even a dual 12 that is obviously better than any elite.

Hell even if you have a +12 engine with 10 repair/restore then he's pretty good.
A sub par crew would be more like... base 10 or worse. 

So try getting good secondary stats on your supports and you will be golden.
Just remember thet engine ability works only on engineers so having repairers with high engine is a waste but a engineer with high repair is valuable.

tl;dr

Your crew is likely not sub par but actually superior to fully elite crews.
Get repairers with 12 repair and 10+ restore
Get engineers with 12 engine and 10+ repair.
Reload is more important for gunners than accuracy 10 is enough and 11 is great (thay will hit soft cap at level 80).
A BO with high repair and restore is better than a BO with high potential.

+12 will work brah.

try to get elite gunners.  id run 11/11 if you arnt getting elite gunners

On your stats say if your rollin engys and you roll a 12engine 9restore,  you might want to roll agian for a 12engy 10restore or even keep one or two 11 engy/11restore.

Just make sure you arnt keeping +12s with a 8 or even 9 if your picky on the restore when rolling supports

-----
But ya +12 are good.   But really try to get elites 4 gunners

 

Actually, don't worry too much about restore on your sailors if their repair is good.
Personally I much prefer a 12 eng/11+rep/anything rest above a 10 rest 10 rep engineer.
Restore is capped fairly low, the repair cap isn't.
Having 900 SD earlier is nice, but if you got a decent repair rate not having 900 SD yet is still very playable.

ignore the elite gunner comment.   They are useless and unnecessary.  11/11s will work wonders.  

11rep/11eng will be good engineers if you see some of those.  +12eng with decent rep is generally what people use.  Ignore the comment about getting good restore stat as well. 

I wouldn't call +12 sub par. +10 is sub par. +11/+12 is par; EBVE is above par (and spendy)

The only sailors worth getting as elites are Reps and Engys.

Gunners all cap (Cap faster with vets than if an elite)




Honestly, Elite Engineers and Reps are good for US as, 4 elite reps with 5 elite Engineers with base b/v/e (109 vets) can repair cap. Plus have great Overheat Time.
Secondary Stats become obselete by 120 due to all the main stats of other sailors cause you to cap Rep and Restore anyway (Plus engineer stat only works on Engineers (Boost from Seamen as well))

Don't worry about capping early, just get the most benefitiall setup you can afford to go to 120 with.

Those who worry about capping early trend to quit and blow a lot of money in the process.

Sub par? a +12? Not at all. A sub par crew would be like, +9 base with no experts whatsoever and less than half the rookies on it. You can kick some butt with those sailors :)