If you don't select the Biomes o' Plenty world type when you create your world, the terrain generation is pretty close to vanilla- there's a lot of land, but also some very large oceans. If I'm not mistaken, BoP does more or less the same thing- although the biomes covering the continents will be different.
My guess is that you just got bad luck with random number generation.
If you're really desperate for land, you could try making random Mystcraft ages (surely there's some sugarcane on those islands). With recent updates, they're now MUCH less likely to fall apart; and as Ocean is one biome of many (especially with BoP and Twilight Forest), you're probably not too likely to get it.
If you can get leather. Hmm...
You could see how well the low terrain and eternal dimness of the Twilight Forest works for Survival Multiplayer with tech mods.