One second I was on a boat, the next I was in the water. It happened fast, but that's not a surprise. It almost always happens quick. Sometimes it's because the boat hits a sandbar. Bam, you're in the water. Or a wave catches you from behind, and before you know it the motor's dead and more waves are coming over the transom, and suddenly it's time to swim. Or there's a fire, and man that water starts looking real good real fast.

I can tell you the next thing you're going to want to see after you get in the water, because I saw it coming right at me Saturday. You want to see Coast Guard orange, because that's the color of the cavalry. They're the people who come fetch you when you've become a tiny chunk of chum in a very big pond. A lot of times it's a Coast Guard boat, but sometimes it's a helicopter, and yes, it was the helicopter can came and fetched me up out of the water Saturday.

It was a drill, a demonstration, a publicity thing. The idea is, you find a reporter willing to jump in the water and be "rescued" -- reporters are qualified for this type of thing because it requires no skill or brains -- and then the reporter goes back to the office and writes positive things about the Coast Guard. That's how it works in public relations: treat the reporter special and hope the reporter treats you special. Well guess what? Dipping me and hoisting me up in the basket didn't do a thing to change my mind. I've been a reporter for way too long to fall for that stuff. So now, with apologies in advance to whomever this may hurt, is the real story.

I've been a fan of the Coast Guard for a long, long time -- ever since I tried, unsuccessfully, to sail a Hobie 16 catamaran in the remnants of a hurricane and instead wound up with a broken mast in a very big ocean and an order to leave my boat because the waves were too big to even attempt to tow it back.

I still remember feeling the shame of a skipper who has attempted something Monumentally Stupid and didn't get away with it. Nobody was hurt, not me and not my friend Tony who was crewing, but it still gives me knots in my belly, that feeling I had leaving the boat. I argued about leaving but not for long. When the Coast Guard told me they were going and I could come with them or not, well, that pretty much did it. The boat? It drifted in and I got what was left of it back, but I did lose something that day. I lost - or at least I pray that I lost - the ability to be that incredibly stupid on a boat ever again, especially with somebody else on board. The waves were too big and it was blowing too hard for a Hobie 16.

What I gained was respect for the Coast Guard. I received the kind of talking-to I deserved. It was an in-my-face lecture about how my stupidity cost taxpayers a lot of money and caused good people to risk their lives on a day when everybody with a lead sinker's worth of sense was staying home.

This column is my way of thanking those people who came out, and the people who are in the guard today. The joke's on you folks there in Station Atlantic City. You didn't have to treat me so well. I know the kind of work you do, the search and rescues that sometimes turn up bodies and sometimes result in lives saved and sometimes turn up nothing. I know you people in the inflatables and the big boats and the helicopters, you go out there when I'm home in bed hiding from the wind I know is going to knock my house down.

And those rescue swimmers, the ones who jump out of the helicopters to stuff the victims in the basket, that's just a little crazy. The guy who picked me up, John Williams, he's jumped into 25-foot seas. He's had to crawl around deep in the bellies of sinking fishing boats in head-banging storms and then tell the captain it's too late, the pumps aren't working, and so now you're going to have to leave your life savings so that it can sink without killing you. And the pilot of the helicopter, Jeff Frye. Well, look, anybody who's ever been up in a small airplane has to hand it to a guy like that. Don't get me wrong, I love flying. I've been up in everything from an F-106 to home-built biplanes. But I do not want to go when the weather is bad. These guys go in almost anything.

On Saturday it was easy. The water was flat and the victim didn't have to be looked for, but even the routine gets complicated. In between dipping reporters, the helicopter was called out on three real cases. Imagine how much better those skippers felt, seeing that big orange thing coming. And so when they were done hoisting me up Saturday afternoon, and I was safely inside, I remembered a time when I saw the Big Orange coming too.