I was a cox'n on the 44367 out of chincotegue, va.in the early 80's. Even though I've run a lot of boats since then bigger smaller more expensive less expensive. I've never felt as good about a boat as the 44's. I could go on and on about the times that boat saved my life and the lives of the crew that sailed with me on her, but I.ll just tell you a couple of the more exciting stores. During that time off the coast of Va. NASA was send things into the air and one of our jobs was to go look for them when they came down.Usually in addition to the standard crew of cox'n., eng.,and 2 seaman we would take along a couple of navy seals (side note navy seals tended to get sea sick on a 44' MLB.) any way this one day we were sent south and about 20 or so miles off shore. The seas were running about 7' and we were looking for a three foot long white cone shaped object. our surch area was quite large and everything was white. At one point I turned around to find a training eng. laying in the well deck. He had gotten so sea sick that he was unable to stop the hach for the turtleback from repetedly bang into him. I yelled at the two seals that just sat on the steps to the well deck and hung on for them selves, instead of helping . After we got the training eng. safely into the turtleback and secureing the hatch. I grabbed the mike and called ops bos at NASA to inform him that I was planning on braking off the surch in order to bring the training eng. in for treatment. The guy at NASA was not a happy camper a told me that I just couldn't do that. With a slightly agitated tone I asked him what the present sea conditions at his desk were. After a moment of intence silence My group commander ordered me to the nearest station. That happed to be station Paramore the next station south of ours. At this point I should let you know if you don't already the 44 is a very slow boat so no I made a judgement call that would cut almost an hour off our return time. I told my regular eng. that I was going to go over a sand bar and then up under the beach cutting our trip by several miles. (finally we get to the exciting part) One thing about the 44 she may be slow but put her up to an island and she will slowly go right through it. As you may have guessed half way over the bar we ran hard aground. So hard in fact that both engines shut down. We are getting hit by some pritty good surf and I turn aroud to see the two seals tring to deside wich side to jump off. I told them to shut up and sit still then I yelled to my eng. to get me an engine, I don't care wich one.He gets me the starboard engine started and we the rest of the way over the bar. When we get to the station the group doc was waiting for us atfer treating the training eng. he told me that i probably saved his life getting as qick as I did.