I remember those days. Anyone who wasn’t armed was insane.
I most often crewed a center cockpit Morgan Out Isle 46' and you know what's really weird? I remember that the folks who were most heavily armed were the power boaters. The big Bertrams, Hatteras' and Chris Craft yachts were loaded fer bear. But the folks under sail looked down their long noses and sniffed that guns were so evil and can't we all just get along? Sailors are in their hearts the beatniks and hippies of the cruising world. It's still that way, too!
My buddies dad owned the boat. Made his money the old fashioned way: Inheritance. This guy was a pilot for the AAF & used to fly the "Hump" over the Himalayas during WWII in the C47s. He would pick up a 1911 .45 or some other gun for $25 every time he landed someplace. When he passed away in the mid 1980s, he left his kid (my buddy) a safe full of very valuable firearms! I remember, he had a .375 H&H Magnum he kept on board permanently. Called it his engine room solution! So that family was an exception to the snooty sailing crowd.
Sailors run a much bigger risk for piracy. They can't run anywhere very fast. Their gunwales are low to the water and by the nature of their displacement hulls they are very stable underway. This makes getting next to them for an unfriendly boarding exercise much easier than trying to board a rolling pitching planing type hull as those found on power boats.