you really want to start Pirate Ship right away
Pirate Ship is countered hard by an engine using stash.
But that could just take way too long to set up. You'd need 4 Stashes or 3 and a Fortune Teller (which you'd somehow need to reliably draw) to reliably get Province. Meanwhile a Pirate Ship player will likely already be Provincing.
Let's do a quick approximation: If I buy Fortune Teller, Ratcatcher, Silver, 4 Advisors, 2 Labs, Stash and 4 Provinces, I need 14 turns. If I ball two advisors at once, it's 13 turns in an idealistic scenario.
Against Pirate Ships, I don't expect many dead turns, because most of my starting cards are gone, and 4 advisors+2labs give me a hand of 11 cards. Sure, if the Pirates steal 4 coppers+silver or 6 coppers, I need one more stash. Or two more stashs, if he focusses his whole game on stealing 6 coppers + silver.
So, lets say, I need 15 to 16 turns to get 4 provinces. Granted, thats not terrific, but its close to Smithy-BMs performance, and I have a hard time to believe that Pirate Ship/ Lab is faster. Especially, if it's under perpetual FT-attack, which can hurt while greening.