Sunday Summary #69

Boat work never ends. Never.

Hi ,

Welcome to Scho & Jo’s 69th Sunday Summary. This edition of the Sunday Summary was written on a Monday aboard PIVOT who is anchored in Reedville, Virginia.

Last Week.

In last week’s email, I forgot to mention a pretty important (read: vital) task we completed. We installed a new bilge pump! In typical boat fashion, reaching our bilge pump seemed almost impossible and extreme boat yoga was practiced. A 1 hour job turned into an all day job thanks to the inaccessibility of the bilge pump.We spent 8 days in Hampton, Virginia waiting out a pretty intense weather system, but were happy to have that time to get a ton of work done. Each day we’re cruising, exploring a new place, and enjoying the local cuisine means we’re not working. So having several days of just rainy weather (which is difficult to film in) gives us the perfect excuse to crank out a lot of great work. We also took this time that we were stationary and in a large metropolitan area for Jen to fly back to Florida for a doctors appointment for a few days.

Once the weather cleared up, we left Hampton, VA, and made our way into the Chesapeake Bay with some “excitement.” Excitement is always relative. We don’t particularly enjoy the 'excitement' on our boat while we’re cruising through... As we were leaving the Hampton River, we heard a noise that led us to open up our engine room compartment where we saw a significant stream of water entering our bilge from the back of our boat. I took the helm while Elliot began investigating the source of the water, which he found was coming from our PSS dripless shaft seal... dripless had turned into spraying water everywhere (noise turned out to be nothing of relevance). We pulled over in the closest anchorage so we could test several scenarios and found out the leak was only happening when we were at high rpm. We decided to continue our cruise for the day and make our way up to Deltaville given the easy sea-state for the Chesapeake Bay - an ideal cruising day that doesn’t come by often, and the fact that Deltaville has a fantastic boatyard in case we needed to get hauled. During our cruise, Elliot watched several tutorial videos, read several articles, and researched more information about our shaft seal - something he never thought he’d even touch on our boat. Once we arrived in Deltaville, we attempted to ‘compress the bellows.’ The good news was that it was super tight and challenging to compress the bellows; the bad news was it was super tight and challenging to ‘compress the bellows.’ After several hours of attempting to ‘compress the bellows,’ we called it a night and pivoted our plans for the following day to again ‘compress the bellows.’ Our plan was to continue cruising the following day since the forecast included another day of a gentle sea-state in the Chesapeake Bay - our ideal cruising time in such a large body of water. We ended up spending 4 hours, but we’re glad to have a working shaft seal that didn’t leak. It was a very exhausting day, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Stress was high given the severity of the issue. If we didn’t solve this problem, we wouldn’t be able to move from our current location. If we didn’t solve the issue correctly, water would leak into our boat. If we made mistakes it might require a haul-out, which can get costly very quickly.We contemplated renaming our channel to “Boat Work Around America’s Great Loop” - kidding.

Once the work was complete, we had some time to play. A short dinghy ride through one of the inlets led us to the Deltaville Maritime Museum. Although we didn’t get to go inside the museum because it was closed, we were thoroughly impressed by the outdoor exhibits, grounds, and information we learned. From oysters, John Smith, to boat building, they had several impressive informational displays throughout the extensive property.

Today we enjoyed a short four-hour cruise up the Chesapeake to Reedville. It’s a small town focused on the fishing industry which is evident visually from the large fishing vessels that passed us coming in and the smell from their fish processing plant. As we were cruising up Cockrell Creek, we were surrounded by the strong smell of fish. We learned of Reedville’s rich menhaden fishing history that began in the early 1900s. They were prosperous and built large victorian mansions along the water in this area. Today’s been a thoroughly enjoyable day and one of the days we strive for since buying our boat. It’s been such a high of highs and low of lows in the past few weeks on PIVOT, really testing our mental strength.

“Our greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.”-William James

This Week.

We’re excited for the upcoming Chesapeake Bay cruising! We’re planning to visit Solomons, St. Michaels, and maybe one or two other stops in between. The Chesapeake Bay has been challenging to cruise through as it’s such a large body of water, which means weather systems have a greater affect on us. So we’re making sure we have ideal cruising conditions, which doesn’t come by all that often. Our travels are very much driven by the weather, so all “plans are written in the sand at low tide” (unknown author).

 Videos. 

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

Cruising ALL DAY to our Anchorage in the Georgetown Harbor on the Great Loop

NOTHING GOES ACCORDING TO PLAN (Cruising from Georgetown to Myrtle Beach on our Trawler)

Catching up on BOAT PROJECTS in Myrtle Beach

 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. Thank you to everyone sending us recommendations so far! We really appreciate it.

 Gratitudes. 

Looking back on the past boat projects, we’re super happy we listened to our “two: yes, let’s go” rule two weeks ago when we left Norfolk and headed to Hampton instead of making our long cruise to Deltaville. Our “two: yes, let’s go” rule is that either one of us can say no to cruising one day without any questions asked. When we originally had planned to leave Norfolk for Deltaville, we had impending weather coming (the weather that kept us in Hampton for 8 days) and it would have been a terrible situation to not have a strong, automatic bilge pump (our bilge pump was working, but not the automatic setting) and have had a serious leak with our prop shaft seal with bad weather on our way. We’re grateful for the “two: yes, let’s go” rule because it saved us a lot of stress later down the line. Of course hindsight it always 20:20, but listening to our intuition really paid off.

Peace and love,Jenn + Elliot