Yep, not a Halloween event. The posts recounting sightings of the boat in the OOT on live come from February/March, 2000.

all i can remember it was a GM event

The boat was used in a Halloween GM (As stated by someone). The boat traveled to specter island where players killed a ton of specters leading up to a named one. Once the named specter was dead, the dead took people back to the one island in OOT (the one where you first stop before heading to BB mountains).

Just FYI, I don't believe this was related to a GM event at all, though a GM event may have made use of that model at one point. I have screenshots of the ghost ship dating back to September of '99, before EQ's first Halloween event. Its possible that it was just a really, really, rare spawn, or somehow triggered by players unknowingly.

While it is possible that it was just a "one time thing", i find it hard to believe that verant would go out of their ways to make a nice model like this, and only one it once for a GM event.

I remember this event! I indeed rode this boat to the spectre islands, to kill the named spectre.

Bump