The boats are a nightmare to begin with. The problem is there is a direct3d issue with the old boat model used which causes no collision with the boats. The only fix for the boats that i've found is the workaround I did initially.
http://www.eqemulator.org/forums/sho...ght=boat+guide
There are a few more posts in there that have more info on how other people got the boats working better than I did. So I would read that through.
Also on a side note, making a classic server like your talking about takes alot of time. Even with a team working on P99 it took them forever to get things working right and they still patch and make tweaks.
An easy starting point for a more classic experience is to disable all the revamped zones, Turn off the tutorial, and change the starting zones for all the races to the original home towns based on their race/class choice.