Solution:

After removing the default value, falf provides a shorter solution: only 5 steps are needed now! Looking at the solution, it seems that, surprisingly, an empty boat can move now from one bank to the other.

The explanation for this result is that, when no action is executed, rules (R1) and (R2) do not provide a value for moved(mis) and moved(can), and so, they are left unknown (note they do not have a default value now). As a result, constraints (R3) and (R5) are not applicable and cannot force the execution of some action. Finally, as we have made rule (R7) independent of the action execution, the boat misterously moves "alone" to the opposite bank. This problem can be simply solved by adding a condition to (R7) as follows:

boatbank'=opposite(boatbank) :- move(M,C).         % (R7b)

which is more natural, as it reflects that the change in the boat bank only occurs after some movement. However, the execution becomes drastically slower, since (R7b) involves a significant increase in the number of ground rules that must be handled by the ASP solver.