What ever happened to mind your own fkin business? I live my life, I leave others alone to live their lives, what ever happened to live and let live??? Leave me alone and I will do the same.
I don't think most of the people in this discussion are denying you the right to live your life the way you want. What they (and I) are saying, is that you have no right to live your life in such a way that it endangers them, their families, friends, etc.
Speaking strictly for myself, if you choose to drink while you drive your boat, and you get run over by a tanker or slam into a tow cable between a tug and its barge and get chopped up into crab bait by the tanker's prop or drown when your boat comes apart on the towline, I am not going to care one whit. Af far as I'm concerned, you will have just added more proof to the fact that Chuck Darwin knew what he was writing about.
But if you endanger someone else's ability to live their life the way they want, then we've got a problem.
Are you okay with an impaired boater slamming into your boat as has happened to some of the posters on this thread? Are you okay with an impaired driver swerving across the median and hitting you or your family going the other way and killing or injuring some or most of them?
You can't have it both ways.
That, I believe, is where the proponents on this thread of no alcohol use before or while operating a vessel are coming from. Ron and the others have made it very clear that they are NOT suggesting that their own feelings about alcohol use in general should apply to everyone else. Only as it applies to being a potential threat to themselves or others.
If you choose to do something stupid and kill yourself I'm going to say good riddance, but I'm certainly not going to lift a finger to prevent you from doing it. But whatever stupid things you choose to do, don't involve or affect anyone else in the process, particularly people who are simply minding THEIR own business.