Is security push going overboard?

Not to kill the clink in your cocktail, but while you boaters are enjoying Opening Day tomorrow, would you keep an eye out for terrorists?

Just a little request from the Bush administration, based on recent intelligence that said that small boats remain "al-Qaida's weapon of choice in the maritime environment.""Oh, swell. That will make Opening Day so relaxing and fun and terrifying," said Susan Waltos, a member of the Seattle Yacht Club.

I hit the docks there the other day to see if people knew what to look for. "How do you know?" Waltos asked. "It's like Jack the Ripper!"

But Neil Duncanson, the vice admiral for Opening Day, understood the premise.

Just that morning, he said, he and his wife spotted a small, high-speed boat racing around in circles on Elliott Bay.

"I probably would have picked up the phone to call the Coast Guard," he said. "But then they stopped and I saw they were... pretty harmless.

"But if they were wearing bandannas or turbans or burqas or something... "

There's a loaded statement. Hard as it is to hear, there's some truth to it. It's the stock image we have of the enemy.

Ask Kraig Kristin, 26, who works at Fishermen's Terminal in Seattle.

"Everybody has different quirks. But I guess if they had a gun and were wearing an anti-U.S.A. T-shirt and had a bomb strapped to their back... I guess then I'd make a call."

Make all the cracks you want, but don't forget the U.S.S. Cole.

That was a U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer that was making a routine fuel stop in Yemen in 2000 when a small craft approached the port side. The Cole's sailors waved to the two men on board, thinking it was a garbage- service boat.

And then their suicide bomb went off, blowing a 35-by-36-foot gash in the Cole; 17 sailors were killed and 39 were injured.

Since then, the Coast Guard — via the Department of Homeland Security — started "America's Waterway Watch," which advises boaters to watch for vessels and individuals "operating in a suspicious manner" near bridges, tunnels and overpasses; ports, fuel docks and cruise ships; and military bases, vessels or security zones.

"People that live and work along the water know what's normal for their area," said Chief Paul Roszkowski of the 13th Coast Guard District, which runs from the Canadian border to the Oregon-California state line. "It's like a neighborhood watch."

That's how it is at Fishermen's Terminal, said Peter Nornes. He's a commercial fisherman, like his father, and owns a 58-foot salmon boat.

If someone wanted to make trouble in a commercial boat, "they'd have to buy it off one of us, and it's so Chatty Cathy, such a sewing circle," Nornes said. "If something looks suspicious, we'd notice."

But if it was a small craft? Not so sure.

"I've seen some pleasure boaters do some pretty odd stuff," he said. "It would be harder, next to impossible, to determine who is suspicious and who isn't. It would be very difficult."

Nicole Brodeur's column appears Tuesday and Friday. Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.

She's got a burqa. So?