Sunday Summary #103

How it ended 🛥️🌅 and how’s it’s going…

Hi ,

Welcome to Scho & Jo’s 103rd Sunday Summary. This edition of the Sunday Summary was written in Green Cove Springs, Florida. 

Our last Sunday Summary was written outside of Miami, Florida with the intention of writing our next email in two weeks, however, 7 weeks went by with a few ‘pivots’ in true Scho & Jo fashion. So grab your beverage of choice and let’s catch you up! 

TLDR: We’ve cruised north to where we bought the boat from (Palatka, Florida), had to pivot in our final trip aboard PIVOT due to some family emergencies, and took PIVOT back to the boatyard we bought her in. We moved off PIVOT and are working on some boat projects before we put her up for sale.

Last Month.

After spending Mother’s Day weekend with Jen’s parents in Key Biscayne, we continued to make our way north on Florida’s east coast ICW - a waterway that feels familiar as we’ve traveled some parts of it 4 times, making it our most frequented waterway. This would be our last time cruising the ICW aboard PIVOT, which made the dolphin sightings and sunsets even more special as we knew they would be the last of them for now.

As we cruised north, we had the opportunity to meet Billy and Sierra from

. We had an excellent time meeting them in person after chatting online for years. It’s always nice to meet other full-time YouTubers as it provides a sense of community that it’s sometimes challenging to find when traveling full-time. As we cruised north, we took the opportunity to see Elliot’s grandparents who we hadn’t seen in over a year

since going up the ICW last March

. While we caught up with them, we stayed in a marina for the first time since January making it our longest anchor-only streak of 98 days and our longest marina-free streak of 120 days.

Knowing this was our last trip aboard PIVOT we wanted one final hurrah! If you’ve been following our journey since we bought our boat, you know that we took PIVOT out for our

maiden voyage

prior to setting out for the Great Loop in 2021. On that trip, we cruised down the St. John’s River in northeast Florida where both of our families live with the intention of going 70 nautical miles down to Sanford, Florida. The trip was a shake-down cruise where we had

our first docking experience

, learned about our

leaky decks

, and encountered

our first dinghy engine failure

that would carry with us until we

upgraded our dinghy motor

. We decided to cruise down the St. John’s River one final time and have a redemption trip to Sanford since we didn’t quite make those final 10 miles from Blue Springs State Park to Sanford from our maiden voyage.

Even before getting on the boat, we

embraced the pivot

as we went from international travel to boat life. Naming our boat PIVOT served as a constant reminder to go with the flow and let change be an opportunity instead of a setback. We met some friends from high school and college at Blue Springs State Park for Memorial Day where we enjoyed swimming in the springs, taking out the paddle boards one final time, and grilling out.

The trip came to a halt with a call from Jen’s mom, who was in need of some help. Both Jen’s mom and grandmother got COVID and her grandmother was in the hospital. Our friends drove Jen to her grandmother’s house where she spent 4 days with her grandmother in the hospital and 2 days at her grandmother's house helping her recover. Thankfully they’re both doing much better now. During that time, Elliot drove the boat for the first time completely solo to the marina where we bought PIVOT. It was not how we expected our boat life journey to end, however, ending with a final pivot did seem rather fitting.

We bought our boat PIVOT with the intention of doing the Great Loop

and now that we’ve completed our goal, we feel content in our boat journey… for now. After spending two-full years living aboard PIVOT, it’s time we give her the deep clean she needs as well as some much-needed boat work. In the past four weeks, we started some boat projects. We hauled PIVOT out of the water on Friday, seeing her bottom up and close for the first time since we splashed in February 2021. Our list of boat projects is long as the time we spent during the loop was only on general upkeep and maintenance. Since it's the summer in Florida our days at the boat yard start early and end around 12/1 pm to beat the heat of the day. 

After spending two years on the boat juggling everything on our plates, we let our physical health go on the back burner. One of our goals for 2023 was to refocus our energy on ourselves by getting more exercise. While we spent 2.5 months in Islamorada this winter, we were able to get into a great daily exercise routine which we've been able to continue today. Last weekend Elliot completed his 2023 goal of completing a marathon. There are no marathons in the southeast United States until September, so Elliot and his dad completed their own “backyard marathon” on a local rails trail complete with a pizza box as the finish line.

This Week.

We'll be working at the boatyard this week with the hope of giving PIVOT a bottom job with new paint and general maintenance items. We're excited to give PIVOT the spruce up she needs after she treated us so well over the past 2.5 years. As part of our health focus this year, we’ll start preparing for our upcoming trip that involves bikes. We’ll be getting onto some bikes for the first time since Mackinac Island, Michigan last summer. We have a fun bike ride planned for today (Sunday). 

“Travel does not exist without home…If we never return to the place we started, we would just be wandering, lost. Home is a reflecting surface, a place to measure our growth and enrich us after being infused with the outside world.”- Josh Gates

 Videos. 

In case you missed it, here are all the vlogs we’ve released since our last Sunday Summary:

TWO WORLD-CLASS ANCHORAGES IN THE NORTH CHANNEL (The Pool to Mary Anne Cove, Baie Fine)

Leaving our FAVORITE REGION of the GREAT LOOP

TOP Waterfall on Manitoulin Island (Little Current to Kagawong, North Channel, Ontario)

We stayed in a world-class anchorage (Benjamin Islands)

EXTENSIVE GREAT LOOP BOAT TOUR (Features we Love for the Great Loop and Full-Time Cruising)

Boating the North Channel in our Trawler (Cruising vs Looping)

Our Last Night in Canada Anchoring in the Turnbull Islands

Entering the USA by Boat

We boated 2,777 miles to Mackinac Island!

24 Hours on Mackinac Island by Bike

Dodging Ferries from Mackinac Island to Mackinaw City

May Monthly Stats.

As May has come to a close, here is our Nebo travel log:

Nights at a marina dock: 6

Nights on a mooring ball: 0

Nights on a free dock: 0

Nights at anchor: 25

 From the Eyes of Ollie. 

I love visiting family. They give me so many treats… a lot more than my parents give me. The first week I was back at my grandparents house, they got confused at who fed me when, so I got five meals in one day. It was great! They also bought me this new puzzle which I figured out quickly as my food was hidden in all the compartments.

 Gratitudes. 

PIVOT treated us very well over the past 2.5 years and we feel grateful to be giving her the love and attention she needs even if it means sweating in 95 F (35 C) heat with 92% humidity! Wishing our Canadian friends a happy belated Canada Day and our US friends a Happy Independence Day!

Peace and love,Jenn + Elliot