You don't try to grow more fruit trees before dealing with the sharks? I personally find that a single fruit tree and a beehive will absolutely not sustain my villagers long enough to accumulate 65,500 tech points.

Perhaps if you choose nature as your faction you can stretch them out a little more, but I tend to reach for the orchard as soon as possible; that gives me plenty of time with room to spare to get a more permanent food solution researched.
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I tend to go for restoration first of all; after that, I set builders on uncovering the leaves from the registry of the dead, for the building skill. Very little walking is involved, so they can gain skill quickly there. After that, there's also a hut to build.

Two starting villagers also already have building skill; it's easy to get three adepts to fix the lift very quickly, if you didn't take too long researching. I tend to cross-train my healer in building; there's not too much for a healer to do until medicine is researched, so without sick people, she will regularly help out with building. That should give you three people who are reasonably skilled builders, if not adept, by the time restoration is researched; only 7,500 tech points spent total, as compared to 65,500.

I also put everybody on research, and cross-train several researchers as farmers; they'll go and help farm when food gets low, and back to research otherwise.
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