There seems to be a couple of other reports on boats, but after reading a couple of them, mine seems to be a little different. I was in survival in a single player world and I was riding a boat. When I hopped off the boat, I started to take damage out of nowhere, hopped back on the boat, and quit the game. When I rejoined the world, the boat was there but I could not ride it. I swam back to where my house was (these were two separate islands) and I could not open any of my chests, and blocks that I would break would not drop anything. I tried leaving Minecraft and opening it again and the world was still in the same state. This has happened twice to me now, and in both scenarios I had left the world while riding on a boat.

Also at the time of making this I tried it in a different world that wasn't a survival island seed, and it looks like it only works on larger bodies of water but I'm not completely sure.