You can't get rich or poor in one day: every once in a while somebody wins the lottery, but it takes most of us a long time to either make it or break it.

• Author: Wiesner, Pat
• Position: On Management - Column

IT WAS THE TOUGHEST DAY ON THE WATER WE'D had so far. We had just come through the narrows exiting New York harbor to the south. Today we would power halfway down the coast of New Jersey at 10 knots to Barnegat Inlet and spend the night. The waters of New York City had been very choppy but those off the coast of New Jersey today were at least four feet and about as much as I could put up with for any length of time.

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I wondered about all the people who were on the water like this every day making a living. All the professional fishermen I met asked, "Where are the fish?" They never seemed that concerned with the state of the seas they took them from.

A week or so ago we left Hyannis, Mass., to bring this trawler back to Florida via the Intercoastal Waterway. The ICW starts in Norfolk and therefore you are in the ocean from Hyannis through Long Island Sound to the southernmost point of New Jersey; then it's up the Bay of Delaware and down the Chesapeake to Norfolk.

What you see most are fishing boats of all kinds, sportsmen and professional.

Yesterday afternoon we came through the City of New York from the East River and spent the night at a marina in Jersey, just across the Hudson from the financial center. The views were spectacular. From a lounge chair on the back of the boat, you could try to take in the majesty of the New York skyline just a half-mile away.

You can also imagine the huge deals and even bigger dreams of deals that have been in play here and are currently in play. And then you catch part of a conversation on the radio between fishermen sizing up their prospects.

Ninety degrees to the south, the Statue of Liberty was about a mile away. My wife looked at it for a long time thinking about her father coming to America in the early 1900s. Was that his first sight? Where did he first put foot on...