I've fixed my issue! I had the exact problem as everyone else. My game was installed on my secondary hard drive (7200 RPM HDD). It's as if the hard drive becomes unresponsive in the Black Cove area. I re-installed the game to my primary drive (Solid State Drive) and played the game normally! Absolutely no issues, crashes etc. I'm in the Black Cove now. So happy to have solved this for me, perhaps this could help some others.

Install the game to your primary drive and then copy over your save. Simple fix!