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Chapter 1
The First Time I See Her
April 2019
First Light entered my life at exactly the right time.
It’s April 2019 and I am working on the MegaDock in Charleston, South Carolina, which happens to be home to some of the most prestigious yachts out there. Not that I am getting anywhere near those multimillion-dollar vessels. I am in the scrappiest corner of the most remote end of the dock, working on the smallest boat in the whole marina. Oh, and technically I am homeless. I am also a thief. But “homeless thief ” isn’t a great place to begin my story, so let’s just say that I am houseless and resourceful.
I’ve been living in my van for a year, maybe two, though even the word “my” isn’t technically accurate. The van— a champagne-brown 2012 E350 that has always smelled of mildew and has always been stained with lunch mushed deep into the carpet—is my dad’s. He bought it for his construction business, and when I first asked him if I could borrow it for a little while he said no, just like I knew he would. I kept on asking, and at some point he stopped saying no. He never actually said yes, but I didn’t have time to wait around. I took the van, placed my $49.99 foam mattress from Walmart in the back, hand-sewed some simple curtains and attached them with suction cups to the windows, and set off, towing trailered boats up and down the East Coast for some quick, easy cash.
I started working under a boat captain named Timmy, learning how to turn screwdrivers, and picked up whatever work I could find elsewhere. I’d had my captain’s license for about a year and hoped that maybe, just maybe, one day someone would take me on as a captain. After I’d spent months chasing work up and down the coast, sleeping in rest stops and going three weeks between showers, eventually Timmy introduced me to a sorry-looking boat. She was pale orange and named after a vibrator, and she was sitting on a broken-down trailer in Newport, Rhode Island. I persuaded the owners to let me race her, so I brought her south to Charleston, gave her a fresh coat of citrus-green paint someone donated, and renamed her Mini Warrior. Now she’s ready to sail.
I’ve found a sponsor to pay the $500 entry fee for Charleston Race Week. I’ve drained my bank account to cover the rent to keep Mini Warrior at the MegaDock throughout April, though $600 is only enough to get me the crappiest dock that nobody else wants. It is old and in need of a ton of maintenance, and whenever you step foot on it, the whole dock tips up and tries to throw you in the water. It is all I can afford, so I learn to cope and am grateful for being only 100 pounds; I am light on my feet and able to manage the bucking dock without too many accidents. I get a blue tarp from somewhere and string it over the citrus-green boat for some sun protection, find a discarded beanbag chair somewhere else, and happily sit out on deck, imagining my life as a true ocean sailor.
While I am out practicing on Mini Warrior, I make a mental note of the location of abandoned vessels I see along the way. If you spend enough time in the waters around Charleston, you’ll eventually see boats that have been washed up by some hurricane or other. They lie like roadkill, half on their side with their keel exposed and vulnerable. They are covered in algae and mildew, slowly being taken back by nature. Technically you’re not supposed to board these boats—the Coast Guard posts signs warning against trespassers—but it’s 2019 and I have no money and am living in my van in the MegaDock parking lot, trying to make a $9 sandwich last me all day, so I don’t really have much time for technicalities.
I return at sunset in a borrowed inflatable tender, turn on my headlamp, and set to work removing winches, empty jerry cans for fuel, fenders, and anchors. I take them back and lay them on the dock—trying not to move suddenly and cause the dock to tip up and hurl my contraband into the water. Then I clean everything up and sell it all on Craigslist.
With my blue tarp and little green boat, my piles of salvaged loot lined up on the dock that tipped and swayed like a fairground ride, I’m not the typical MegaDock clientele. I don’t mind being different—I’ve always been that way—but there are times when I look out at the other boats and feel envy starting to growl inside me. It is never the big boats that catch my eye. I have zero interest in the billionaires’ floating play palaces, with their sparkling stainless steel finishes and helicopters on the top deck. I like boats built for speed, not partying. And of all these true race boats—with their sleek lines designed to work with the wind and waves—there is one I love to look at more than all the others.
I first see her leaving the dock one morning. It is early, and I am rinsing out the CVS brand anti-dandruff shampoo from my self-cut hair with the dockside hose when I notice something moving out among the masts, not far from me.
I look up and can’t stop staring.
She is a long, sleek bullet of a boat with a giant red dragon painted down the side and a big number 54 emblazoned in red on the bow. She is beautiful and cool and the complete opposite of my little green Mini Warrior, which isn’t even as long as my van. I am proud of the Mini, but she is a Prius, while the boat with the dragon is a Ferrari.
First Light. She isn’t called that then; she’s named Dragon. But she is First Light. The boat that will change my life.
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