Teheuti
I get what you are saying, but Tiphareth (the Sixes) suggests a point of balance—no matter how temporary—a sigh of relief at an easing of the struggle. Success is an accomplishment—usually implying a favorable result. Also, 'success earned through effort,' seems to me to say that the work has been done, something has been achieved with an easing of prior stress. There can be adjustments, but they are more like the minute corrections made in steering when driving down a straight road. This card seems more like the success-phase following a prior error (the 5), so that, for the moment there is smooth sailing. Another rough patch appears in the 7. I would say that Swords as a whole are the trial and error.Have you never been boating? In my experience with boats you can't simply stamp your authority on the water. You have to work with the tide or the current, constantly correcting your course. To me this is a picture of how the mind and the scientific process work. We try to progress and move forwards in a given direction, but frequently find we've taken a wrong turn or drifted off course. If we're smart we acknowledge this fact and try to correct our course, at the same time (hopefully) learning from previous error. A mind that's incapable of this often ends up paddling in circles.
In science, I'd say it's that point when all the 'chatter' and self-congratulations or blame fall away and what remains is 'just the facts.' It is being purely in the moment, with no 'stories' about what's going on. [This doesn't mean that a querent won't have all kinds of stories about what the people in the boat are doing and feeling!]
At it's ideal: the people in the boat may have gone through all kinds of hardships to get there, and casting off may even have been a problem but, for the moment, there is tremendous calm and relatively smooth sailing. The past is over, and the future has not yet presented itself. Things simply 'are'—and with that comes the potential for tremendous clarity—which is much more apparent in the Thoth deck than in the RWS—where the sadness and strain of the Swords is still all too apparent.