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.”