Hello. I do not think that this 'sighting', if that is what it can be called, will be of any use to you because it happened so long ago. But I came across your website and thought, what the heck, why not record it here anyway.

It happened when I was a child (I have estimated Summer of '79) and sleeping out on the beach in front of our summer beach house with a friend of the same age.  (This was in an era when it was considered safe to let children do that).  I was woken up by something, probably in the early hours of the morning when it was still dark.  I got up and stood on the beach and saw a round object with multiple, multi-colored flashing lights either on the water or hovering just slightly above it.  The object was approximately 20-40 ft. from the shore, and there was a sound associated with it; like a white noise, but at a low, soft pitch.  At the time I thought the object was a submarine.  Now that I know what submarines look like, and that they cannot come that clo!se to shore, I know that it definitely was not.  Also at the time I was certain that it was not a boat - having grown up around boats and spending every summer on that beach, I was familiar with the shapes and appearances of boats.  Well....that is all I remember!  Feel free to contact me with any questions.  I am not making this up; the object that I saw could have been a perfectly legitimate 'vehicle' of some kind, or I could have a faulty memory.  Anyway, good luck with your research.  FYI:  I am 27, female, married w/ one small child.  I work part-time for a Seattle non-profit.  I'm not particularly into UFO's or other unexplained phenomena, in fact I could be called a skeptic.  But I am interested, and I am convinced that I saw this object back in the summer of '79 when I was 9 years old.