Alot of people have trouble making long trips with a boat, myself included. As for a 2nd boat in your inventory automatically being used when one breaks, well, I've had a 2nd boat on me when I just failed to make it to shore and guess what... I got spawned back to starters.

I agree that the bazooka, with a normal attack, seems to be more powerful than the bronze halberd and 5 star hit. When I did my La Tim quest, I tried using halberds and wiped (2 level 35 characters with ~ lvl 35 Roca's). My 2nd attempt, I used G.bazookas and also got lucky not to get trapped by La Tim on the first move. Not even close to a wipe out that time.

The ET here is tough as nails, that damn laser cut through my fire warrior at lvl 45 with a lvl 40 Roca. ET went first and I got to die, that was it.