When John Benson joined the Coast Guard as a seaman 30 years ago, what attracted him most to the nation's smallest sea-service was the prospect of helping to rescue recreational boaters.

Back then, Coast Guard crews routinely came to the aid of stranded pleasure-boaters who had run out of fuel, towing them back to their marinas and making sure they were okay. Benson qualified as a radio operator so he'd be at the center of such rescue efforts. "My job was to send our boats out there to help bring people in," he says.

Today, retired from the Coast Guard and "skipper" of his own 17-foot powerboat, Nautikids, the 48-year-old Benson expects that if he ever runs out of fuel or gets stuck on a shoal, he'll have to radio a commercial towing service rather than a Coast Guard crew to bring him back to port.

While the Coast Guard still rescues recreational boats if life is at risk—indeed, the news clips are filled with such stories every week—it no longer tows pleasure-boats that have run out of fuel or that experience routine mechanical trouble. By law, that's left to commercial towing firms such as Sea Tow or TowBoatU.S. "There's an entire industry out there that didn't exist when I was in the Coast Guard," Benson says.

The change in towing policy may be the most visible shift in the Coast Guard's changing relationship with recreational boaters, but it isn't the only one. As longtime boaters can attest, their contacts with the Coasties, as Coast Guard men and women are popularly known, used to be more frequent—and friendlier—than they seem today.The Coast Guard Auxiliary, a volunteer body, now handles much of the inspection and education work. Shown here are Auxiliary boats on patrol.

Talk to some old salts at your marina and you'll hear stories of how Coasties used to be considered part of the recreational boating family. Coast Guard personnel actively promoted boating safety and did some community outreach. Although the Coasties boarded some pleasure-boats to check for required safety gear, inspections were a lot less formal. And no one carried a weapon or wore a flak vest.

These days, however, boardings are more businesslike, and Coast Guard personnel often are strict and unsmiling. They're also conspicuously armed: boarding crews routinely carry pistols and automatic rifles and wear body armor. And their bright-orange inflatable patrol boats often have an M-240 machine gun mounted on their bows.

Indeed, the Coast Guard's profile among recreational boaters has shrunk dramatically over the past few years. State agencies now conduct most on-the-water inspections and the states and volunteer organizations have taken over boating education, while the Coast Guard has turned more to homeland security and law enforcement. The sea service has become better know for its heroic rescues after Hurricane Katrina and its controversial handling of the oil-tanker spill off San Francisco.