A page with custom parameters
I think you are asking about hook_menu().

what you need is to create an item which has a base of boats, and takes an argument.

function mymodule_menu() {
  $items = array();
  $items['boats/%'] = array(
    'page callback' =&gt; 'mymodule_boats',
    'page arguments' =&gt; array(1),
  );  
  return $items;
}