Sunday Summary #71

Excitement & Exhaustion

Hi ,

Welcome to Scho & Jo’s 71st Sunday Summary. This edition of the Sunday Summary was written aboard PIVOT who is anchored in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

Last (few) Week(s).

We enjoyed seeing the Annapolis Blue Angels Show and got some great photos of the planes flying over some of our friends boats on the loop.

Following the events in Annapolis, we moved the boat to Kent Island, MD for Memorial Day as we traveled to Knoxville for a family wedding. When we returned, we were met with a heat wave with temperatures in the 90s. We chose to stay at the marina an extra two days so we could plug into shore power and use our air conditioning. It was a much needed reprieve against the heat.

We left the marina and continued north and had our second most rough day on the Loop this year. It was a trifecta of a day with strong current, our bow thruster (temporarily) not working, and coming back to our anchored boat with a catamaran just feet away from us. It was a rough day to say the least (stay tuned for that vlog to be released).

We spent two days in Chesapeake City, MD before waking up at 3am for a 3:55 departure from Chesapeake City through the C&D Canal, into the Delaware River and into the Delaware Bay. Why did we leave at 3:55am? To time the tides, which ended up working out great because we saw a whooping 10.2 knots on PIVOT who’s typical cruising speed is 6.5 knots. We were flying!

Later that afternoon, we arrived to Cape May, NJ. Hoping for a restful sleep that night to recover from our 3am wake up call the previous morning, the following day was anything but restful as we juggled two boats dragging anchor in our anchorage as well as our looper friends on another trawler who had their anchor chain tangled with a sailboat’s anchor chain. Our approach to boat problems has been to help any time we can because some days we’ll be the ones to need help. We were running around on our boat as well as in and out of our dinghy and onto other people’s boats (with their permission) to help for 7 hours. We’re always happy to help but it was exhausting - not the kind of day we had planned.

The following day we had our first of 3 cruising day in the Atlantic Ocean. This has been something that has been weighing heavily on Jen for weeks. Worried about the ocean swell and all of the things that ‘could go wrong’ as the weeks leading up to the Chesapeake were anything but uneventful. We’re happy to say that we waited for an excellent weather window and had a calm, uneventful cruise - just how we like it!

As we’ve been cruising through new territory, we’ve had less and less time to edit videos as more of our time has been spent researching dog friendly anchorages, peculiarities about various waterways, what to see and do in the places we visit, and much more. The first two months of cruising have been relatively “easy,” as we’ve traveled these waterways before and have a general idea of what to look out for and what to be mindful of. You may have noticed that we haven’t posted as many videos because we’re exhausted. We’ve been feeling a bit overwhelmed in the past few weeks and have been trying our best to juggle everything on our plate. We like to say that doing the loop is anything but a vacation, it’s a full time job for any cruiser. So we’re juggling multiple jobs and are doing the best we can. We appreciate your patience as you wait for our videos to come out and for your understanding as we work on finding our balance. The Great Loop is a marathon, not a sprint!

“If you get tired, learn to rest, not quit.”-Unknown

This Week.

We’re currently sitting in an anchorage with 4 other looper boats as we wait for our next good weather window to cruise up the New Jersey coast and into New York. We are beyond excited to reach New York as it’s where Jen’s from, we have a lot of family who live there, and it means we’ll be entering into the Hudson River Valley very soon - a waterway we’ve been super interested at cruising through since learning about the Great Loop. The weather doesn’t look promising this week, so we could easily be in New Jersey for a week. Only time will tell.

 Videos. 

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

Finding a protected anchorage off the ICW in Wrightsville Beach on the Great Loop

Cruising to the BEACH on the way from Wrightsville Beach to Camp Lejeune by Trawler

Navigating an ICW Coast Guard SECURITY ZONE on the way to explore Beaufort, North Carolina

Blogs.

Here are the blogs we’ve written since our last Sunday Summary:

• May 2022 Great Loop Expenses

Monthly Stats.

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

Nights at a marina dock: 11Nights on a mooring ball: 5Nights on a free dock: 0Nights at anchor: 15

 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. 

There’s a saying in boating that “sometimes you’ll watch the show and other days you are the show.” In the past two weeks, we’ve been the show and other days we’ve watched the show. We’re grateful each and every time someone is there to help us when we’re in need of a little help. It always goes a long way and really sticks in our hearts. 

Peace and love,Jenn + Elliot