Sunday Summary #112

Announcing the next Pivot

Hi ,

Welcome to Scho & Jo’s 112th Sunday Summary. This edition of the Sunday Summary was written in St. Augustine, Florida.

Last Week.

Happy New Year! We rang in the new year with family, games, and… a cold. We had a blast being the fun Aunt and Uncle one last time in 2023. Immediately after the family left, a cold went through our family’s house and got everyone sick except me (Jen). The cold gave us a bit slower start to the new year than we had planned, but we’re excited about what 2024 holds. We’ve set our goals and intentions for the new year, including some personal goals (Elliot wants to run an Ironman, and Jen wants to run her first marathon) and some business goals (growing our website). Both Elliot and I are enneagram 3’s (the enneagram is a personality test) and love goals!

We also spent two days with the new owners of Pivot, introducing them to the systems aboard, teaching them any boating tips and tricks we learned, and showing them some of the quirks that come with any old boat.

We are thrilled to say Pivot is back in the water with her eager to learn new owners!

It was a very bittersweet moment and a little emotional at times, but we felt very proud as Linda’s engine hummed, her bimini was reattached, and she entered the St. John’s River ready for the next adventure.

This Week.

We’ve got a big month of work planned with blog posts, YouTube videos, and more edits to our anchoring course. Our days look like coffee or tea with a short morning dog walk, on our computers until 5 when we take a dog walk on the beach with Ollie, make dinner, work for a few more hours, and then have some down until bed. We’ve been playing cards (our favorite card game, Shithead, from our time in India) or doing a puzzle at night.

The Next Pivot...

We're excited to introduce you to Pivot the second! After a lot of discussion, reviewing our budget, brainstorming, and dreaming, we decided our next pivot is going to be van life! We bought a 2023 Mercedes Sprinter Van and have named it Pivot the Second. It’s completely empty inside, so we’ll be building her out starting next month. We have some grand plans, big adventures, and wild dreams in the making, and we can’t wait to get active while seeing more of the United States with Ollie.

If you’re thinking, “Do they know how to build a van?” the answer is absolutely not! We have the knowledge and experience from boat projects and living on the boat full-time to help us transition into this next chapter, but there will be many things we've never done before. It’ll be an adventure full of errors and mistakes, which make for great learning opportunities. We're going to document all the highs and lows with YouTube videos.

I’m sure some of you are also wondering, "Is this the end of us boating?" Nope, we’re not done with boating. We loved our boat, Pivot, the adventures we took her on, and the memories we had with her. Once we’re done with van life, we hope to return to boating… maybe a sailboat in the Caribbean or a trailerable trawler in the PNW. Just because our time with Pivot has come to an end doesn’t mean we’re done with boating. If our journey on Pivot taught us anything, it was to Embrace the Pivot. One pivot at a time.

“If you chase anything in life, chase the things that get you excited about living. Chase the things that give you hope, happiness, and a glimpse of a better life. Chase the things that make you want to be a better person. Chase the things that inspire you to think, create, and live joyfully. Chase the things that reinforce in your soul that you can make a difference. Chase the things that make you want to transform your heart from selfish to selfless. When you chase that kind of storm, you are chasing rainbows.”- Shannon L. Alder

 Videos. 

With the new year, we have begun our new release schedule of 3 videos/week. The first week was a little rough as a cold passed through the house, causing every family member to get sick except Jen. We hope you enjoy the additional video each week. 😊In case you missed it, here are all the vlogs we’ve released since our last Sunday Summary:

Two Boats Running Aground on the Tenn-Tom Waterway

FINALLY HEADING BACK TO A MARINA (Columbus, Mississippi)

INSANE RIVER CONDITIONS (welcome back to the boat)

 Blogs. 

We didn't even know boat cards were a thing when we received our first boat card. Since then, we've received a lot of boat cards and have given a lot of our boat cards to others. We've compiled all of our information about boat cards in our latest blog post.

We're writing many blog posts, including how-to's, travel guides, cruising guides, checklists, and more! Since our YouTube videos are more experiential-based, we'd love to answer your questions in detailed blog posts.

If you have any questions you'd like answered or topics you want more information on, please respond to this email and let us know!

We wrote the foreword to Currently Away.

You may remember our friends Bruce and Maggie Tate from their appearance in our Dismal Swamp vs Virginia Cut video or from our more recent Chattanooga video. Bruce just recently released his book Currently Away - How Two Disenchanted People Traveled the Great Loop for Nine Months and Returned to the Start, Energized and Optimistic! We were honored to have been asked to write the foreword for his book and are excited to see it published. Bruce and Maggie have shared with us a generous discount code if you purchase the e-book on the publisher’s website using code ny2024 for a 42% discount until January 10th. The physical book is available for preorder on Bookshop and will be released on Tuesday, January 23. We’re so excited to get our hands on a copy!

 From the Eyes of Ollie. 

Some humans joke that they like to take long walks on the beach, but I truly love taking long walks on the beach with my family. It’s my favorite part of my day. There are so many good sniffs and I love to play in the shallow water, looking for shells and rocks. The air smells different, and the sand is soft under my paws. I love the beach!

 Gratitudes. 

We’re excited for what the next chapter has in store for us and can’t wait to get more active, see more of the United States, and travel with our home, including Ollie. The next few months are going to be challenging in more ways than we can imagine, but we’re excited for what we’re going to learn and how we’re going to grow. Nothing worth doing is easy, but it’s always worth it in the end.

We hope you had a safe and enjoyable New Years!

Peace and love,Jenn + Elliot

 P.S. 

If you are new to our Sunday Summary, you can take a look at previous issues here.