"honed into alertness by the beauty and the strangeness of this place.” - Arundhati Roy

James Jackson

Sunset Charter - Drexel Law The sky looked brushed on. Blue thinned by high white strokes... like someone had dragged a sponge across the top of the world. A light breeze marked the day. Not still, not strong, just enough to let the sails breathe without snapping. They came aboard just before 6:30. A boating couple and a classmate of the wife’s. Both the husband and wife carried British accents softened by years on this side of the Atlantic. The classmate’s voice was local... northeast American, younger, sharper. They’d won the charter through a silent auction supporting Drexel’s Public Interest Experience... stipends that let law students take summer placements doing pro-bono work instead of chasing clerkships and billable hours. I donated the sail this year for the first time. Not for marketing, just because someone should. I gave the safety briefing. I always do. This is a boat. They're beautiful, dangerous, warm, and lively in all the right ways. Treat her right and she'll get you home every time... but you have to treat her right. As Mal said of Serenity, “A ship like this, you treat her proper, she’ll be with you the rest of your life.” We got sails up early. The Raven, wings stretched against the sky, black on white, spread wide against the soft-filter light of lacy blue. I aimed for my usual stretch north of the bridge... best view of the city if you can find it. Tried to beat to keep North of the Ben Franklin, tacking again and again. The wind picked up... ten, maybe twelve knots, steady. First Light heeled gently to starboard, hull squatting as she accelerated. You could hear the hull settle into motion, that soft tickling wake, the shift in resistance as she neared hull speed. There’s a feel to a close reach when she’s trimmed right... it’s not noise, exactly, but motion that hums through the wheel. Everyone aboard can feel it... like racing through a mountain pass with your hair blown back. Then I looked up. The bridge line hadn’t moved against the sky. Looked left... same section of shore... Five and a half knots of boat speed against five knots of current. We hadn’t gained a yard. One of those nights where motion lies to you. Eventually I bore away and ran her downriver wing-on-wing. Jib to port, main to starboard. Spread wide, balanced in the lull. The kind of motion that quiets people, even if they don’t know why. A tug and tanker came downriver, raising a sudden signal, half a dozen quick short blasts on their horn. I checked AIS, hailed them on 13. "Were you signaling intent?" The reply came back easy: “Just honking at the neighbors. Saw you already, we’re keeping clear.” Then they followed with a melodic honk from multiple horns... showy, cheerful, bouncing off the condos like river jazz. Politics surfaced for a moment: China, Trump, the trade war. None of us knew how negotiations had gone that day, but no one expected competence from that corner of the world. We moved on. We docked just after the last edge of color left the sky. They lingered at the gate, chatting in low voices, watching the water go dark. I stayed aboard and coiled lines, ran halyards down, straightened the cockpit. There’s comfort in the ritual of making a boat ready for sleep... like tucking in someone who carried you all day. You don’t rush it. You do it right. They waved as they left. I waved back.

Boat & Crew

First Light

O'Day, 322

James Jackson

Owner