Galloping across the waves on our sea stallion, romping across endless fields of blue, plunging, rearing, surging and swaying rhythmically. The boat, urged on by Aeolus blowing great whooshes of air into our sails, plows an endless furrow through the bounding main, leaving on each side of our swirling wake a row of hissing white foam—our signature, saying "We were here!" Moments later, evidence of our passage fades and merges with the invisible evidence from countless other vessels, large and small, on good trips or bad, that have passed this way over the centuries, erased from the evanescent record that is the ocean's surface.

The basic color of the ocean is pale transparent aquamarine; this is the elemental color (as in the primitive elements earth, air, fire, water). But then, the ocean is inscrutable, and gives up information sparingly. Therefore, the gaudy and bright sky casts its luminous blue palette in all directions, and the inscrutable ocean reflects this back, taking on an over-color, or wash, of luminous electric blue, with a smattering of white from clouds, and innumerable fleeting sun sparkles. This is not the true color of the ocean, but just a cloak or mantle of brightness behind which the inscrutable ocean lurks.