First experience was in North Carolina in 1973 where a young CG officer boarded our 16' runabout and inspected everything. Found a very small hole in a PFD, inserted his finger and tore it open from one end to another with an arrogant flourish (showing off to his two crew and us) and issued a citation. This left our boat with four persons and three serviceable life preservers and a long way back to the launch site. The commanding officer responded to my written complaint about the treatment with an apology and elimination of the citation. Second was about 60 miles offshore sailing to Bermuda in 1981 in the middle of the night when a CG cutter responded to our query of whether our radar reflector was doing its job and how our radio sounded and our lights appeared. They were responsive and quite nice and also queried us about our boat, port of origin, and destination. Very professional and helpful. Third was halfway back from Bermuda in June, 1981 when we lost our 31' sailboat in the 50' seas of the surprise hurricane Bret (now referred to as a tropical storm). Long story but a ship heard our mayday and radioed the CG. The CG C-130 found us as we broke into the eye of the storm 300 miles offshore and was able to contact a freighter still fighting the hurricane. The storm closed in around us again as the freighter found our life raft but we finally were pulled aboard after many hours of struggle and work by the freighter. The CG did a great job and the coal freighter answered the call even though it lost at least a day in the queue to pick up coal in Norfolk. Been boarded for courtesy inspections many times since and have never minded one iota.