I have only done two actual rescues at sea, but one stands out in my mind.
My girlfriend and I had just finished having dinner on the ICW, and returned to the boat. From habit, I turned on the VHF and almost immediately heard a mayday call. This guy was apparently offshore, but I decided to take a peek out the inlet to see if I could find him. He claimed his boat was on fire, but had no L/L to find him. The conditions were good, less than 1 meter seas, on a clear night. We saw the fire as soon as we cleared the inlet. Turned out to be about 10 miles away. Racing out there, it appeared we were going to be first on scene. USCG bombarded us with questions as I was manuvering very close to a 65-75 foot fishing boat, about 2/3 involved with heavy flames. There was one very scared, very naked guy on deck with keys in one hand and his pants in the other. He was too high off my deck to jump on my boat; he had already lauched a raft. He ended up jumping into the water, and my GF fished him out of the water. He only had one item to say, and it was lets get out of here, there's propane on deck. It was HOT. I really thought my paint was going to blister. It all had a happy ending, he was solo. USGC showed up maybe 40 minutes later in a 41 utility boat; before that, there was a helicopter telling me to "leave the area; its dangerous", a CBP boat, and a drift boat showed up. These things tend to be chaotic, so I don't know that standard rules apply, and it doesn't much matter, since without practiced behaviour, habits don't really work anyway in a crisis.