Two years ago a police boat approached us to order me off the bow. I was wearing a life jacket, sitting on the deck of a southbound sailboat moving at 7 knots on a lovely day in June. I feel about security checks the same way Chris Christie feels about teachers' salaries: cut them drastically. I've got company.
Security Checks on Hudson River Anger Boaters - NYTimes.com: "Ten years after the terrorist attacks downriver made security checks commonplace, a tea party of sorts is brewing on the Hudson, as boaters and marine businesses complain bitterly about being stopped too often and questioned too closely by officers wearing flak jackets and holstered pistols — many of them on the lookout for terrorists.
And as boating season begins, that vigilance has become one of those vexing flashpoints, like baggage searches and airport body scans, in the shifting definition of what is normal — post-9/11 overreaction to some, and a response to real risks to others.
A petition drive among boaters has generated hundreds of signatures and scores of angry comments.
Boat clubs are mulling strategies, and the largest boating-industry group along the river, the Hudson Valley Marine Trades Association, recently wrote the Coast Guard commander in New York to protest “an incredible increase of recreational vessel boarding.”"
