Last Days of Summer

Photographer/Director: River Jordan
DP/Edit: Nate Best
Location: Massachusetts
Shoot Days: 7

In the Last Days of Summer 2022, we spent a week aboard the Shenandoah, a 152-foot schooner out of Vineyard Haven. No engine. Just sails and silence. Built in '64, but shaped by the bones of 1850s vessels, she felt less like a ship and more like a doorway. Time didn't matter out there, only the wind and the old rituals. 

The Martha's Vineyard Ocean Academy runs her own now. Students hoist thick sails, muscles burning, singing work songs the sea hasn't heard in a century. The ship moans, leans into the wind, and you ride her like a memory. 

At night, when the sun gives up and the stars arrive in full riot, you can almost see the old sailors again, eyes lifted to the sky, finding their way by light alone. Something stirs in you then--old, unshakable. It stays.

View River's Portfolio here.