I suppose it speaks to the style we use when we run our games, but I don’t think catching the bandits should be a foregone conclusion. If you can’t run them down, you’ll have to investigate. Talk to the locals and find out who’s sheltering them, or talk to the sheriff and learn where their lair is. Or maybe you don’t meet your husband again until months later, and now he’s riding with the brigands. I think what you want to avoid in the situation with the boat-building is saying, “You try to build a boat but you can’t. You’re still in the same place with the same situation.” Maybe I should have specified where you ended up.
If you fail, your boat breaks up and you float down-river until a fisherman pulls you out of the river beside a little village where many of the buildings have been burned.
But I think the GM doesn’t need to supply all that in the failure clause - he can reveal the village and the burned buildings after the failure. What do you think?