Today’s Independence Day, 2001, and I own a pocket yacht at the club down at New Hamburg that I want to sell.  It’s not much, just a Montgomery 15 that me and my wife Marie took out on the Hudson over free weekends: I’d skipper, and she’d handle the jib.  We’d stuff the galley with Gatorade and Triscuits and step on them every morning as we groggily got out of bed, leaving explosions of crumbs on the floor.  Although space was precious as air, Marie was afraid of scurvy for some reason, and insisted on bringing a big box of tangerines—in return, she’d let me bring my fishing rod and tackle box.  She never caught scurvy, and I never caught any fish, but we’d lower the sail and toss broken Triscuits and tangerine peels onto the evening water, just in case a hungry striped bass came along anyway.

            
             Marie was alive way back when swimming in the Hudson didn’t scare us: nobody paid attention to Pete Seeger with his banjo singing about PCBs in the water.  So we jumped in those murky waters, splashing and wrestling. I liked to hold her under water, just to scare her, until one time she swallowed water and came up gasping and coughing and scared me.  Doctor Liu tells me that her cancer couldn’t have come from the Hudson, and I believe him, but some things really stick in the bottom of your mind forever.  I drink water straight from the tap now and hope that she’ll forgive me.  She was worried about scurvy, without a thought of anything more dangerous.  Now that they’re dredging the twenty-year old PCBs up from the river bottom, it’s more dangerous than ever to swim.  I don’t really go out anymore so I thought I might as well just sell the boat. 

            
             I drive over to the club and wheel it out, and then I decide I’d first sail around a bit for old times.  We bought it used from an ad in the paper, and Marie used to bug me to scrape off the old name, The Minute Maid, which probably carried some hidden meaning for its previous owner. But as I drag it out of the shed, covered in tarp and cobwebs, the boat’s name is the first thing I see.  I fetch a few buckets of water to toss in the hull to flush out the beetles and spiders, and then I start rigging it.

            
             I thread the main halyard through the mast and prop it up.  I’m halfway done setting up the jib before I realize that it would just flap around without my wife to pull it in.  I set the mast in, but I leave the jib sail in the shed.  I tie everything down, and panting a little, I rest and look up at the mast and its fluttering halyard. I roll up my pants and haul the trailer down to the T-dock, and give it a good shove into the river and scramble on board.

            
             After I snap the rudder onto the stern, wipe the tiller, and push the daggerboard down, I remember how much I’d missed sailing.  I skull out of the dock and pull on the main halyard, and some more beetles fall on me as the sail unfurls.  But the wind is sharp, so I cruise on a beam reach out into the middle of the river.

            
             First I point the boat north, upwind.  Marie once explained how the mast and the curled sail create pressure that push the boat forward against the wind, but I didn’t really understand much.  I know the points of sail, and I trust nature to do the rest, without getting physics or anything else involved.

            
             I pull the sail into a close haul, and the boat chops and bumps through the current as I point it upriver.  There are other boats out—a lot of Sunfish and one bigger yacht that has a barbeque on board.  I wrap the lines in my hand and watch the family.  Smoke rises from the grill as a girl pesters the cook; a woman’s bringing up drinks from the galley, and a boy’s at the wheel, pretending to steer.  They had dropped anchor, and their sails were still wrapped around the boom: I guess they just used the engine to get out here.  It’s a real shame when a father doesn’t teach his boy to sail, especially when they live next to a river like this.  I catch the boy’s eye and pretend to fuss with the lines and the hiking straps, to make myself look interesting, but all he does is pick his nose.

            
             I tack and point west.  The boom nearly knocks my glasses off before I remember to duck, and I let go of the main line to cover my face.  I stamp down on the line before the sail pulls it out of the boat, and I grab it before the boy can see me floundering in my tiny boat.

            
             As I approach the west banks, I notice there’s more garbage floating over here.  I live on the east side, near the Culinary Institute and the old Vanderbilt mansion, which is way up past the bridge.  The Hudson is the only important boundary of the Northeast: everything west looks like Pittsburgh and everything east looks like New England.  But the parts right here by the river still look like Iroquois land.  I bump up against a dead fish and some plastic bottles, which remind me of an old commercial of a shirtless Indian shedding a tear as a dump truck heaps garbage onto a huge landfill.  That’s New York.

            
             I push the tiller right and tack northeast.  Water sprays my face as I cross the dead zone.  The current is strong now, and I’m not making much headway, even though the wind is snapping the telltales hard against the canvas sail. I can just see the Mid-Hudson Bridge in the distance, but I’ll never make it there. There aren’t any boats around me now, but the smoke from the barbeque is still billowing upwards.  My arm’s getting real tired from holding the lines tight, and so I let go and point the ship downwind.

            
             The Minute Maid is moving fast now, but since we’re following the current it seems like we’re inching along. I pass the anchored yacht in a few seconds, and the boy looks fascinated this time.

            
             I’ve been out for two hours already, and I climb below to take a break.  It smells like orange juice, and I find a rolled bag of rotten Triscuits in the corner.  I dust off Marie’s bed and lay down.

            
             Later, I wake up, and I’m freezing.  Alarmed, I sit up and look outside—it’s getting dark, and I’m miles south of the dock. I think I recognize the Indian Point nuclear power plant on the west bank. I lunge for the tiller and point north again, pulling the sail in, and then I feel the stiffness in my old joints.  I’ve definitely caught a cold, and I should get back quickly. I check the boat to see if I can toss anything overboard, but all I can find are the Triscuits, which I hurl away.  I tack three more times, getting splashed with colder and colder water, and I can still see the power plant’s blinking lights behind me.

            
             Then I hear a high whistle and the mast glitters.  Someone’s setting off fireworks in Newburgh, it looks like.  I watch the show intently.  Huge cake rockets go up occasionally and shower sparks across the hills.  I’m on starboard tack and the sail blocks my view, so I crawl up to the jib mast and cling to it, staring upwards.  A skyrocket explodes and lights the river ahead with red, white and blue stars.  I think I can see the dock—it’s not that far now.