Favorite Links

These are some of our favorite links:

www.svdragonfly.com
svdelilah.blogspot.com/

www.floatingclassroom.com

www.billatheholt.com

The legend of the crossroads

Crossroads' homeport of Memphis, Tennessee is located on a bluff overlooking the mighty Mississippi river. This region of rich delta farmland was the birthplace of the delta blues and pioneering blues man Robert Johnson, who wrote Crossroads Blues.
The legend of the crossroads and its connection to Johnson's life begins in African folklore. According to what I’ve been able to find out, Esu, a go-between for humans & God, was believed to be the guardian of the crossroads and could be met there to appeal to God on one's behalf. This didn’t sit well with the missionaries, who taught the Africans that pagan gods were not the true God and therefore were evil, the devil. So the crossroads became a place of black magic where deals could still be made, but were now made with the devil.
These superstitions traveled to the American delta with African slaves and the crossroads became the place to meet the devil and trade your soul for fame, talent or whatever you desired more than life itself. The crossroads at the intersection of highways 61 and 49 in Clarksdale Mississippi is the legendary location of Robert Johnson's deal with the devil. Johnson is supposed to have met or conjured the devil there at midnight and asked him to tune his guitar. This gave Johnson his amazing and unique talent but cost him his soul. In his song Crossroads Blues Johnson tells the story of his return to the crossroads to try to reclaim his soul.
The crossroads has now become more of a metaphor for a turning point in life’s journey than a deal with the devil. We haven’t sold our souls for our sailing adventure, but we have reached a turning point in our lives and we need all the roadside guardians we can get. Naming our boat Crossroads was also a way to take a little bit of Memphis and the delta with us.

About the Boat

Standing at the Crossroads again-

What happened to the "old Crossroads" and buying the Endeavour that is now Crossroads.

Hurricane Katrina clobbered New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in August of 2005. We were one of the thousands left homeless in its wake. We did not live in a house in New Orleans or one in Gulfport. Our house was safely six hours north in Memphis, TN but we had just sold it. We were one week from moving onto our boat to start preparing for our big sailing adventure. Our boat, of course was in New Orleans.

News was slow coming from the hurricane zone. Actually there was a whole lot of news, but not much about how boats in marinas faired. We were in limbo for two weeks. Did we still have a boat? Was it damaged but salvageable? (Our worst fear since there were no boat yards left on the Gulf coast so it could take a year to get anything fixed).

After two weeks, Michele called the insurance company (again) and was informed that they were totaling everything in that zip code- houses, cars, boats, everything- sight unseen. We could begin our search for a replacement.

Our friends put us up in their spare rooms and provided us with unlimited internet and long distance phone service. We are very grateful for their help and support as we worked to keep our dream alive. A list of possible boats was drawn up and an itinerary was made for a trip to Florida to boat shop. One month after Katrina we were staying with my folks in the Tampa/ St. Pete area and preparing to drive a loop around the state to see possible boats. The search began right there in St. Pete with the boat I am writing this on. Yup, we bought the first boat we looked at. We still drove all over the state and poked around in boats on both coasts, but we returned to the Endeavour 40 that is now Crossroads. We moved aboard on October 23 less than two months after Katrina and the same day Wilma hit just sought of St. Pete.

Who are we?

Glenn:
I have always had a tendency to turn my hobbies into lifestyles. A bit of touring by bicycle made me want to ride coast to coast across the USA. As a high school yearbook photographer, I wanted to shoot for National Geographic and travel the world. College was a reality check. I learned that National Geographic only had eight full time photographers and my odds of becoming one of them was like pinning my hopes on playing for the NBA, if there was only one team. Advertising photography seemed like a more likely place to find employment and unlike photojournalism wouldn't involve asking people if I could take their picture while their house burned down in the background. The cross country bike trip never got past the dream stage but I did manage to turn my photography hobby into a degree and a 20 year career in commercial photography. Power tools, ceiling fans, large women's clothes, fishing lures and pesticides have passed before my lens. The closest the ocean ever got was a submarine sandwich.
Kids growing up in Memphis, Tennessee (actually the bedroom community of Germantown) didn't sail. I was 26 before I stepped aboard a boat that you couldn't ski behind. But then I was hooked. I learned to sail on my sister's Catalina 25 and then read Irving Johnson's "Westward Bound on the Schooner Yankee". That's when the hobby-to-lifestyle thing kicked in again. I wanted to sail around the world. My sister moved up to a Hunter 31 & then moved to New Orleans, leaving me boatless. To keep my sailing dream alive I bought the derelict Clipper Marine 32 in the slip next to the one vacated by the Hunter. A year on the hard taught me a bit about diesel engines and fiberglass and a lot about blisters and gel coat removal. Everything on the Clipper that moved got rebuilt or replaced and everything that didn't move got painted. This was not the boat to take me around the world, only a training ship. I worked on my sailing and boat fixing skills knowing that I would need both in the future.
The future is now and as dreams are best shared, my sailing dream is shared with my wife/partner/commodore/deck cutie - Michele. Our relationship grew during daysails and weekends on Pickwick lake and moved on to marriage and bareboat charters in the Caribbean. Now it's on to the next big adventure.

Michele:
I grew up in a small town with one red light, living in the same house for 23 years. You might wonder why someone like me would sign on for this big adventure of circumnavigating the Caribbean. I have always loved to travel. While working in schools with summers off, I traveled three times each to Central America and Europe.

I met Glenn and, without having ever been on a sailboat, thought his dream of sailing around the world sounded awesome. Why not? I grew up teaching swimming and was happy as a clam in the water. I loved scuba diving in Belize.

Glenn and I married in 1998 and started saving for our dream trip. We sailed on weekends on nearby lakes. On vacations we loved sailing charter boats in more exotic places. We started with a 5-year exit plan that turned into a 7 ½ year plan. We also revisited the part about “around the world” and decided to circumnavigate the Caribbean.

Throughout the “planning years,” I have worked for a wonderful non-profit organization called Facing History and Ourselves. My work with FHAO was much more than a job, it was a great combination for my education and social work degrees. Working with the staff, teachers and students at FHAO gave me hope that we can make a difference in this world. I hope that wherever we go we will bring that message.

As we leave our house, jobs and supportive friends, family and colleagues, I wonder if we are stepping out of the safety of our routine into the abyss.
Oh well, as Mark Twain said, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”