Sunday Summary #104 - Our next Adventure

Sunday Summary #104 - Life after the Loop

August 20, 2023

Sunday Summary #104

Life After the Loop

Hi ,

Welcome to Scho & Jo’s 104th Sunday Summary. This edition of the Sunday Summary was written at Jen’s parents' house in northeast Florida.

Since moving off our boat in early June, I planned for these Sunday Summaries to come out every two weeks, and admittedly I’ve edited this email 3x over the course of 6 weeks and now it’s become ridiculously long. But here we are! Let’s get you caught up 😊

    In this Sunday Summary:

    What’s next? ☀️

    RAGBRAI 🌽

    PIVOT is For Sale! 🛥️

    Sailing with Friends ⛵️

    Ollie's 8th Birthday 🎉

    Last Month.

    The Great Loop consistently has boats starting and ending their journey. Throughout our time on the loop, we celebrated people’s first day and last days on the loop since we all start and end in different places. With each boat nearing their end comes the question “what’s next?” For some that question was easy. Some couples felt like this trip was one and done. They missed home, their family, and life on land. For other’s, the Great Loop instilled a sense of adventure they craved more of. Lastly, for a small group of people, they decided to do the loop again and go for their platinum flag (a platinum flag denotes a person has completed the Great Loop twice whereas a gold flag denotes a person has completed the loop once). 

    During our time on the Great Loop, we met several couples who fell into the category of craving more adventure! We talked about our dreams for adventure after the loop over docktails and campfires. Our friends Tony and Karen on Long Recess (27 Ranger Tug) took a week off from the Great Loop to walk a section of the Camino de Santiago in Spain. Whereas our friends Chris and Lisa on Taylor’d for Two (Bayliner 45) decided to sell their land house and boat and buy an RV to continue to explore the United States. Our friends Stuart and Tracey aboard Dog House (Jeanneau 43) decided to pursue hiking the Appalachian Trail. The crew on Sojourn (27 Ranger Tug) are biking on many of the rail trails across the US. Lastly, our friends Mike and Beth aboard Amy Marie (27 Ranger Tug) decided to haul their boat to the PNW and explore the San Juan Islands, Desolation Sound, and Puget Sound. 

    Listening to all our friends talk about their plans for their next adventure inspired us! We knew from the day one of buying our boat PIVOT that the Great Loop was just another chapter in our book. It wasn’t going to be our whole book, but the Great Loop chapter would alter the direction of the rest of our book. So here we are in another transition period of our lives between one adventure and the next, reviewing our budget, researching the adventures in life that peak our interest and curiosity, and assessing what’s feasible for our current phase in life.

    After our last email, we read many emails on happiness for completing such a wonderful chapter, sadness for selling PIVOT, and excitement for what’s next. While we’re still wrapping up our Great Loop chapter (70+ videos left to edit, blog posts to write, and projects to complete), we’re also working on our next adventure. Each and every next chapter adventure our friends shared with us was added to our bucket list, but figuring out which of those are in our budget and what works best for our current phase of life requires research and planning. Although our next chapter may not be on a boat, this is certainly not the end of our boating career. 

    There were a few things about this past adventure that we’d like to incorporate into our next one…

    • Traveling with Ollie made us happy. She brings us a lot of joy.

    • Cruising at 6 knots taught us patience and allowed us to appreciate a slower speed of life.

    • We enjoyed traveling with the comforts of home.

    • Sunsets and sunrises on anchor are magical.

    • We enjoyed seeing more of the United States in a way that most people don’t have the opportunity to do. We're incredibly grateful for the opportunity!

    There are a few things we want to change from our boat life and Great Loop chapter…

    • Getting regular exercise was challenging on a boat going 6 knots with a loop schedule.

    • Coordinating plans with friends and family to visit was difficult since we prioritized weather and our comfort aboard PIVOT as our #1 priority.

    • The loop is amazing, but it’s also a full-time commitment making it challenging to get all our work done and have enough time to explore the towns and destinations along the way. We want our next adventure to not have the timeline of the loop.

    “One day, the mountain that is in front of you will be so far behind you, it will barely be visible in the distance. But the person you become in learning to get over it? That will stay with you forever. And that is the point of the mountain.”-Unknown

    A few weeks ago, we met our friends, Adam and Kathryn, to celebrate a big milestone as they completed their goal of visiting all 50 states! We met them in Iowa, their last of the 50 US states to visit, to do RAGBRAI (Registers Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa) - a 7 day, 500 mile bike ride across Iowa. This event is the largest bike event in the world and begins by dipping your bicycle tire in the Missouri River and ends with dipping the tire in the Mississippi River. 

    During the 7 day ride, we...

    • saw the beauty of Iowa from an average of 12 mph

    • rode up and down many of the hills throughout the state (Iowa is about as flat as a waffle)

    • ate a lot of delicious food including a ton of corn

    • drank a ton of water and electrolytes because the hardest day (in terms of elevation gain and distance) coincided with the hottest day with a heat index over 100 F (37.7 C)

    • physically and mentally challenged ourselves in a way that none of us had done before by showing up to our bikes day after day

    The idea of getting on our bike each morning after having ridden 70 miles the day before was not appealing, but the sense of accomplishment and wonder we all felt on that last day was indescribable. Of course, we documented our journey and it will come out after our Loop videos on YouTube.

    After two months of boat work, in hot and humid Florida summer with a heat index well over 100 F (37.7 C), we we put PIVOT up for sale! It was a very bittersweet moment but we’re proud of all the hard work we put into her to prepare her for her next owner. In typical boat project fashion, one project lead to another that weren’t originally on our radar. There were many cosmetic projects we had put off due since the Great Loop takes so much time. After 2.5 years of traveling and living aboard PIVOT, we gave her a new bottom paint, sanded most of our exterior teak, painted the entire boat (except the hull), and gave her a good scrub. She looks awesome!

    .

    This Week.

    Now that our time isn’t spent traveling to and from the boat yard or doing boat work, we’ve been focused on editing and working. Between RAGBRAI and an upcoming sailing trip, we’ve been focused on editing videos to maintain our video release schedule while we’re traveling. We have an exciting trip planned with our friends, Andy and Gwen, aboard their sailboat in Maine in the next few weeks, and could not be more excited! Although I (Jen) have some experience on my step-dads sailboat as a young child, we both haven’t been sailing since we took sailing lessons in Melbourne, Australia in January 2020. We are both very excited to learn from Andy and Gwen as they already taught us so much in our 2 months traveling southbound as buddy boats from Maryland to Florida in November 2021-January 2022.

     Videos. 

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

    PITCH BLACK entering LAKE MICHIGAN (to Charlevoix the Beautiful)​

    WE ANCHORED ON LAKE MICHIGAN next to SHIPWRECKS

    THIS IS CRUISING LAKE MICHIGAN​

    ALONE on LAKE MICHIGAN (How Weather Rules Our Life)​

    One Day in Saugatuck (the Art Coast of Michigan)​

    INTO THE FOG ON LAKE MICHIGAN

    WE MADE IT TO CHICAGO BY BOAT (very emotional)

    Half-Way done with the Great Loop Q&A (your questions answered)

    Our One Day Exploring Chicago and the Chicago River!

    Boating up the Chicago River and starting the Mid-West Rivers

    It's Time to Cruise down the Mid-West Rivers (Joliet to Ottawa Illinois)

    PASTRIES, FOG, and a PACKED Lock on the way to Peoria, Illinois

    HECTIC Day from Peoria to Havana

     From the Eyes of Ollie. 

    I celebrated my 8th birthday a few weeks ago. My grandma gave me a yummy pup cup. It was delicious! 

     Gratitudes. 

    As we continue to work on the next phase of our adventure, we are constantly grateful for family and friends. Elliot’s Mom, Connie, made the two-day road trip to Iowa with us and was our SAG (Support. and. Gear.) ride. She’s done RAGBRAI three times, first dating from she was 18, so her wisdom was a vital part to help carry us through the tough days! Being able to share and celebrate this exciting milestone with our friends, Adam and Kathryn, was amazing! We’re also so thankful for the time my parents gave us as they helped us with boat work in the hot and humid Florida summer heat. Doing boat work on someone else’s boat really means they love us. We’re grateful to be able to share more time with friends and family!

    Peace and love,Jenn + Elliot