I honestly cannot imagine a low population emulator without PoK. I am definitely one to long for the glory days, but without a few hundred folks around to carry my lazy ass around, gimme a port stone and book any day.
But, a genuine boat ride would be nice.
Long ago, I mentioned that there was a boat in Nedaria's Landing that works just fine. You can stand on it, it moves along a path, just doesn't zone you. But, as speculated in many other posts, it wouldn't be awfully hard to reproduce the illusion. You'd need static zones is all - ones that do not 'go to sleep'.