It would appear that this is a result of the fix that was put in, where the ships were not being recognized.
They went from
"Runes working, but the ship not being recognized by NPCs"
to
"Runes not working, but the NPCs have no problem recognizing your ship".
The latter is less an issue (runes can always be remarked) for the boat's physical state, but if you don't know where you parked, it can be a much bigger issue for the ship owner trying to track it down.
With messed up runes, I was able to find my ship because I almost always park my ship at one specific location outside the buoy line of the Floating Emporium. I simply launched a rowboat at the New Magincia docks, and sailed it to the FE to where I could see the ship on my radar. I boarded it, set sail back through the pass between islands of New Magincia and Haven, recalled to deliver to vesper, then went around Buc's to put ashore in Trinsic. The fisher NPCs had no problem recognizing it was my ship, despite the rune issue.
Of course, once I got the quests out of my hold, I drydocked and relaunched my ship as a precaution.
Making matters worse for some people is that theoretically, if you launched your ship before publish 70, and haven't docked it and relaunched since, you could get hit by both bugs.
Suggestion for all ship owners - if you aren't going to leave your ship where you can always find it, at least drop a marker in UOAM/UOC/EC Map while you're on the parked ship before you leave, so if the bug DOES kick in, you know exactly where to look.
