My girlfriend has been playing Dragonborn on her Xbox. Last night I looked over and saw her taking a nice leisurely boat ride into the harbor at Solstheim. I told her it looked cool. She said you only get to see that ride when you first go there, but thereafter the transition is merely marked by a cut screen. A mod that allowed the boat ride every time you went there would be a nice touch, I think, but it would probably require scripting. So I hope someone who can script will release something like that.

I've already managed to create a rowboat that travels to a location, and the player stays on it. Really easy to do actually (not so to get it to look good lol). I believe people are already working on boats, whether moving to somewhere (real-time travel) or sailable (player controlled). Either way, I think it'll be much easier to achieve a quality result once modders get hold of the DB source scripts. Those usually don't get released right away though.

Yeah, I believe it's Trainwiz working on real-time boat travel (to complement his trains, and carriages).
I'd like a player controlled boat, even if the collision was un-natural and water clipped through it. It'd still be great.
I'm not sure the DB stuff will help though, as that's a set scene, and won't work just anywhere. (that said I haven't seen the scene in question, I'm hypothesizing.)