Switching views away from hero

I was just wondering if there is a way to switch the view in the game away from the hero. Specifically what is happening in my game is that you come out of a cave and it immediatly switches over to the river and shows a boat leaving port and heading up stream, when the boat is gone it switches back to the hero. I think I could do this, but I'd have to switch the hero's sprite to a boat and make a seperate chipset where water is walk-onable(is that a word?) Is there any way to just switch views?

Edit: One more thing, Is there a way to make a monster flee from battle? (You attack three bandits, one flees and gets on the boat and floats upstream.)