It was a great day yesterday, sun out, wind blowing, but something was missing out on the Delaware River. I realized what it was only this morning.
In the nearly five hours I sailed, i was looking for it and not seeing it.
What I did see were occasional gusts coming from the west, turning the otherwise blue surface black with bunches of hard little waves as I raised Bluebird's sails, the main reefed, and cast off the mooring to sail with the current and against the wind.
On a long tack toward the Pennsylvania shore, I heard gunshots and located them coming from behind what looked like a 30-foot-high silver-gray fabric curtain, hung on telephone-type poles. As I drew nearer, I noticed a small powerboat anchored just offshore from the curtain. And even closer, I saw the power boat start up and head for me.
"This is a security zone," the captain of the boat called to me. "Change your course."
I tacked, and then I called back.
"Whose security zone is it?"
I got no answer, and tomorrow I'm calling the Coast Guard to find out.
Bluebird and I sailed past Beverly Point, to where you can look due west to the Philadelphia skyline about 15 miles away. That fetch in a westerly builds up a pretty respectable chop, and although this time it was sailable, I wasn't interested in more than a pleasant little cruise, so I turned and headed upstream.
I saw some people walking along the bank, where the tide had fallen toward low. One had a white boxer-type dog with a black spot on its left eye, like the mutt in The Little Rascals. Someone sitting on a park bench up in the trees took a photo of Bluebird.
But there were no boats on the water, and in the solitude, I kept looking for something that I couldn't identify. I looked upstream, toward the lift span bridge, thinking I'd see it -- maybe a ship heading out to sea, or a change in the weather, but there was nothing there to capture my interst.
I looked up to the sky. It was full of jet condensation trails, long white ones, the recent ones thin as an ink stroke, the older ones fat as an earthworm. They crisscrossed the blue, and caught below them were wisps of white, like cotton pulled out, swirling between the tendrils.
But that wasn't what I was looking for.
The sail went well but at the end it was somehow disappointing.
And then this morning I realized what I'd missed.
When you are out on a boat on a perfect day, the only thing you need for success is to feel the movement, sense it in all parts of your body. I'd been too focused on things and had missed the pure pleasure that's possible on an autumn day in a little boat.