The rel cap is at around 2.7 mill TA. Your gunners' TA is at 3.8 mill, the reload cap is thus at 71% of your reload TA.

You can have around 71% of your total crew number, and you still are above the rel cap (which is higher than the acc cap). So all you need to do is find your total crew number and multiply that by 0.71, and take off recruits accordingly.

In your case that's all of your recruits ( 61 right?).
And then you're still well above the reload cap.

Wait until the next veteran conversion event and you can easily blow 200-250 experts per gunner without running the risk of dropping below the reload cap.

The full formula for calculating true ability while including the penalty incurred for having lowered recruits is as follows;

Displayed Ability * Sailors Maximum Manpower * (((V/M)*4)+E)*(1-((N-R)/M))

Where; 

V = Number of vets

E = Number of experts

R = Number of recruits

N = Maximum number of recruits

M = Maximum crew size

And according to my spreadsheet, your can maintain reload cap if the sum of your sailors percentages is atleast 92%. You should be able to burn down to 620 experts without gaining any vets and still be over the cap. For every successful conversion, you can waste another 3 conversions. But pay attention to your total percentage, every failed conversion not only loses you the experts contribution but also increases the amount lost from lack of recruits.

Many thx for the explanation EricIdl, danita & for the full formula Benzer33.

Hmm 92,64%, nice, I can reduce all my recruits (1 left) and I still can have 3x convertions regardless the result.

Help me alot ^^