I can't even use boats... When I get out I end up 50m behind. Anyways, I seem to NEVER get boats to drop as boats, even when broke by hand. And I definitely never remember them dropping as boats when crashing. Does velocity have anything to do with it...?
I've gotten used to traveling with a number of backup boats in inventory. Usually the boat will break before any land has even rendered so it's pretty much traveling blind and then it's hard to even work out where you crashed let alone find whatever the boat dropped. Having the boat returned to your inventory when broken sounds useful considering how glitchy they are.