As I got to the river this glorious blue morning the Carnival Victory was just nosing around the pier and into view. (What victory they mean, I don't know, since this is a cruise ship, but there you have it.) The huge ships are a joy to watch. They float up the river slowly and silently, and they have shallow drafts (you sailor types, did I get that right?) so they make almost nothing in the way of waves. All of which, combined with their bright paint jobs and their out-of-scale relationship to the other boats and the buildings lining the river, gives the odd impression that they're not realy part of this picture. They might have been cut-and-pasted into the scene, and seem to leave no impact when they're gone. The two geese swimming right in front of me didn't even glance at this towering monster passing by, which just reinforced that sense.

As the Victory slipped behind the pier to the north, two kayaks, one red, one blue, raced up the river, yellow paddles flashing. They were passed and nearly swamped by a speedboat and not one but two cigarette boats (so called because they're shaped like cigarettes). You don't often see those on this part of the river. There's too much traffic for them to really open up, and I don't trust them because from where the pilot is located it's hard to see what's directly ahead, especially at the speeds they go. Nevertheless, there were two of them, ripping huge frothy wakes; I wondered if they'd swamp the kayaks, but the kayaks just bobbed along.

Following them came three small boats identical except for their paint jobs: one aqua, one blue, one white. They had very little outdoor deck, so they probably weren't pleasure craft, but it wasn't clear to me what they were. They held a very precise formation, in a row with three boat lengths between them.

Then, as I was about to leave, came another Carnival cruise ship, smaller and faster than the Victory. As it passed, one of those tiny, enthralling miracles happened: a plane had taken off from Newark heading north, and for about half a minute its flight path held it in apparently perfect alignment over the ship, though in fact they were miles apart vertically and horizontally. It looked as though the plane were a kite the ship was flying as it sailed up the river.