With all the high crime areas we've been, this happened in of all places, Castine Maine. From a sound sleep I felt the boat move oddly and, I snapped awake. Someone very carefully, had just stepped on deck.

Your guy with the .357 is a fairly new and growing phenomenon. Armed America. I grew up in a rural area in a rural state(VT) where there were more guns than people. Hunting was a way of life there. But in all those years of hunting myself, I don't recall a single incident of someone using their weapons for defense. The downside was guns were used for suicide too often, in "crimes of passion"(too often a wife was shot in a drunken brawl). Accidents happened, but rarely, because,...

It was an unspoken rule(if you wanted to be able to hunt with others), guns were only loaded in the field. Loaded guns in any other situation are terrifying to me, that's the just the way I was brought up.

Today, there's a new fear out there that must have something to do with the gun lobby's and gun advertising. I've never felt the need of a self defense weapon(some people live more dangerous situations than I, but that is really rare). But in this new world, I worry if the fearful looking stranger walking past my family on the street, may be carrying a loaded gun. That's bizzare to me! A loaded gun!

Oh yeah, the boarding! As I came out of the vee berth, I heard a hell of a commotion. My 5' wife was already half way up the companionway ladder. With her two kids between the vee berth and the intruders, she was loaded for bear!

I came up behind her in time to see one guy tangled in the mizzen backstays. His partner, running way out ahead of him, caught a toe on the docks and did a high speed yard sale.

Within seconds they were gone(and some beat up...). 2 kids, guys, 20 somethings, probably hammered(and scared witless),... , were trying to lift our flag off the mizzen boom(?).

A prank. Thank god nobody had a loaded gun, what a mess that could have been, with no hero's.