The parking lot at Durham's Lincoln Community Health Center fills quickly on a weekday morning, as cars, taxis, and shuttle buses jockey for space. Boarded-up houses and junked cars pockmark the surrounding neighborhood, where the poverty rate is clearly much higher than the 15 percent countywide. But inside the center, the mood is upbeat, and the lobby and halls teem with activity.

Sandra Groover

As a gale blows outside and fifteen-foot swells buck Makulu II through the pitch-black night in the southern Caribbean, a frantic voice crackles over the ship's radio, rousing the crew from its slumber. A nearby ship is having trouble steering, and the captain needs assistance.

A block behind home plate at the old Durham Athletic Park, close enough to smell the hot dogs on game day but too far back to snag a long foul ball, sits the office of an unusual start-up business. The converted tobacco warehouse is just north of Durham's downtown loop road. But, like the trailblazing company it houses, it's far enough off the beaten path that part of the street leading to the entrance is gravel.

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