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The Coast Guard has had that authority since the day it was founded my friend, and it's not like this authority hasn't been upheld by almost every court in the land for the last hundred years or so.

If you're docked in a port connected to an ocean, or any large navigable waterway they have the authority and the legal right to do this.

It's not anything new. Hell, the Coast Guard can search US Flagged vessels outside the territorial limits on the high seas.

I do wish they weren't sniffing around pleasure craft in Monterey Bay and instead concentrated on actual threats to national security but the fact remains they've had the power to do so for longer than I have been alive, and that's a while.

L

The Coast Guard has had that authority since the day it was founded my friend

I'm sure they have. Courts in this country haven't done their job from day one.

I do wish they weren't sniffing around pleasure craft in Monterey Bay and instead concentrated on actual threats to national security but the fact remains they've had the power to do so for longer than I have been alive, and that's a while.

I think we may not know the whole story. These guys may have earned a spot on sombody's watch list. Maybe the guy is a smart A and this is payback.

Also, if the CG is suspicious about a place in the bilge, they have the right to enter any enclosed space on a boat, regardless.

"The Coast Guard has had that authority since the day it was founded my friend, and it's not like this authority hasn't been upheld by almost every court in the land for the last hundred years or so."

More than likely by one of th 5/4 decisions by our not supreme courts. The law needs to be changed and fast or lets just stop the bickering and remove the 4th amendment.

I am very close to a WWII Navy vet who spent alot of his time chasing U-Boats off the East Coast. One can find old U-Boat lookout towers along the beaches.
IF, you know what you're looking at, that is.
These historical stories weren't incorporated into history books used by American public schools, for some reason.

There is quite a bit of information here:
www.battlebelow.com/viddoc.htm
WAR ZONE: WW II OFF NORTH CAROLINA'S OUTER BANKS (PART I)
VHS

WAR ZONE, by North Carolina filmmaker Kevin Duffus, is two 90 minute videos of archival footage and contemporary interviews showing Outer Banks people and scenes, war action at sea and the personal stories of witnesses and victims of the German U-boat assault along the East coast of the United States in 1942 with its epicenter at Cape Hatteras.

The United States suffered one of its worst defeats of WWII not in Europe or the Pacific but along the nation's eastern seaboard. Three hundred ninety-seven ships were sunk or damaged and nearly 5,000 people were killed. The loss of lives, ships and raw resources represents one of the greatest maritime disasters in history.

For six months, sixty-five German U-boats hunted Allied merchant vessels practically unopposed within view of American coastal communities. The greatest concentration of these attacks occurred off North Carolina's Outer Banks. War Zone is a story of infamy, irony and innocence lost.

Featured in Part One are the heart-rending stories of torpedoed Merchant sailors and young Coast Guard lifesavers unable to come to their rescue. Viewers will marvel at the courage of a young mother who delivered her newborn son in a lifeboat on the storm tossed waves of the Graveyard of the Atlantic. Learn how Germany surprised America's defenses despite Britain's warnings.