Sunday Summary #58 - Restarting Our Great Loop

Sunday Summary #58 - Restarting Our Great Loop 🇺🇸🛥🔄

March 03, 2022

Sunday Summary #58

Restarting our Great Loop!

Hey ,

Welcome to Scho & Jo’s 58th Sunday Summary. This edition of the Sunday Summary was written aboard PIVOT who is anchored in Newfound Harbor, Florida. This Sunday Summary is coming to you on a Wednesday because we restarted our Great Loop TODAY! (ok, by the time this email was edited and reviewed, it was yesterday).Our work month in the Florida Keys has flown by! We are so excited to have begun our Great Loop journey and be back to traveling on the water. Here’s a recap of our last week:

    Last Week.

    I (Jen) spent the week back home in northeast Florida to attend a doctor’s appointment and worked on updating our website while Elliot stayed on PIVOT solo filming our engine maintenance video back in Marathon with Ollie.

    On Saturday, we attended the Sunset Celebration put on by two Gold Loopers (people who have completed their loop). It was an awesome experience! We met the director of the America’s Great Loop Cruiser’s Association (AGLCA), Kim Russo, and George and Pat Hospodar, the two authors of the

    we used as reference going north. We also met a few of our viewers! It was such a cool experience to meet Laura and Mark who told us that we inspired them and Brian who shared his wild boating experiences on the loop. We are so excited that we get to share completing the loop with them this year! The whole event left us feeling excited and ready to go....

    We made the decision to leave Boot Key Harbor on Tuesday giving us two days to prepare PIVOT for her 6,000 mile journey ahead. As filled up our water tanks one last time, we found a leak!

    It’s never a fun experience to find a leak in your boat. We taste tested the water to identify if it was salt water or fresh water, and it was fresh so we knew it’s coming from our fresh water tanks and/or connected systems. We have yet to find the leak, but we’ve removed our floor boards in our aft cabin so we can find its source. Unfortunately, like many boat projects, this project took way longer than we expected and it’s still not fully resolved. We hope to run a few more tests so we can identify the leak asap! What you see in the photo below is our aft cabin that went from neat and tidy to a total mess in a mater of minutes. Just another day on a boat.

    We didn’t feel ready to leave Boot Key Harbor and head out to Key West. We knew this was the end of our work month and still felt the weight of many unfinished tasks.

    We still have a LONG list of boat chores, projects, and tasks that still needs to get done. But the thing about that pesky list... it will always be there. As soon as one item is marked complete, two more get added onto it. The most important things will always rise to the top of the list and get done (provisioning, filling our water, completing engine maintenance, and boat safety checks).

    We left Boot Key Harbor and made our way south towards Key West where we officially restarted our Great Loop! It was an 8 hour cruise and was not be the most enjoyable of cruises as we had wind hitting our beam for most of the cruise. Once we arrived to Key West, all of the anchorages were packed with boats. Most, if not all, of the anchorages were known for having terrible holding. One of the anchorages has the nickname of “bowling pin alley” where boats are known for constantly dragging into each other. Kind of scary!

    We choose a day that had light wind and dropped our anchor in 20 feet (6 meters) of water, meaning we basically put out all of our 140 feet (43 meters) of chain. We had decent protection from the wind, however, we had a wind vs. current situation (the wind and current go in two opposing directions, which means the boat is constantly fighting which way to go) which made for a not great night sleep.

    This Week.

    Today we restarted our Great Loop! We enjoyed some cuban coffee, key lime pie, and a great cruise to New Found Harbor.

    We have begun filming our Great Loop daily vlogs! This has ben a long time in the making. Ever since we left Crisfield, Maryland in November, we have been thinking about what we wanted our Great Loop videos and content to be like for this year. We’re so excited to see so many new places, gain countless more memories with friends and family, learn more about the United States, and gain new skills. Cheers to an awesome year ahead!

    "And suddenly you know...It’s time to start something newand trust the magic of new beginnings."-Meister Eckhart, German theologian

     Videos. 

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

    What we learned from owning a boat for a year (and living onboard full-time)

    If you haven’t already, we would love for you to share our videos with your friends and family to spread the love. It's a FREE way to show us support that goes a very long way!

     Extra. 

    The incredible kindness from the boat community always amazes us. Our friends, Ron and Marie from Amazing Mile Marker Stops, helped us while we were in Florida last summer for Elliot’s wrist surgery and recovery and they visited Crisfield, Maryland. They sent us photos of PIVOT as her bimini was torn and in need of some aid. They helped us take the bimini down (something we wish we would have done looking back on it) and replaced a few missing screws. They vlogged their experience which you can watch here:

    Amazing Mile Marker Stops Helps out Scho & Jo

     Blogs. 

    Hooray! We are all caught up on blog posts and feeling ready to hit the ground running to start the great loop! Incase you missed it, here are all the blogs we’ve released since our last Sunday Summary:

     Great Loop Recommendations. 

    We are looking for recommendations for destinations and spots along our Great Loop to go see, visit, and enjoy. It's been a real challenge for us to keep track and stay organized with the many wonderful recommendations we've received thus far. So we've created a Google Form to help us stay organized.

     Book & Resource Recommendations. 

    We are looking for books, websites, or resource recommendations for the various environments along the waterways on the Great Loop. We want to learn more about the plants and animals in the various ecosystems in the ever changing waterways along the loop. If you know of any great books to help us learn more about the regional environments we travel through, please email us!

     Gratitudes. 

    It may sound silly to someone who’s life isn’t always on the move, but this past work month has been amazing! Staying put in various anchorages throughout the Keys has been such a joy. We have had a variety of weather conditions, connectivity, and spots to take Ollie to shore. We were able to focus on getting a lot of great work done which we’re excited to reveal some of those things over the next few weeks as we finish up a few loose ends. Thank you for your continued support along our journey as we’ve been quiet on YouTube and social media over the past month.

    Peace and love,Jenn + Elliot