Sunday Summary #72

Relief + We're on a Podcast!

Hi ,

Welcome to Scho & Jo’s 72nd Sunday Summary. This edition of the Sunday Summary was written on a Tuesday aboard PIVOT in Staten Island, New York.Scroll down to the bottom of this email to hear about how we started the loop and what lead us to PIVOT in the first place on The Pursuit of Happiness Podcast!

Last Week.

We waited 4 days on anchor in Atlantic City, New Jersey for a good weather day to make our final cruise on the Atlantic Ocean. We spent a total of 8 days in New Jersey and didn’t make our way onto land. During that time we did a lot of editing, computer work, and (most importantly) Ollie learned how to do her business on the boat! Once we had the weather window we were looking for (wind strength and direction, wave height and period, current and tide, and swell direction), we left Atlantic City with our buddy boat, Crustacean, who we had the pleasure of meeting in Chesapeake City, Maryland.

Our cruise on the Atlantic around New Jersey wasn’t without excitement. We had a big wave hit us that shook us, our fuel line got air in it which required us to turn off the engine and bleed the fuel line (which Elliot did in a record 25 seconds) while Jen was at the wheel anxiously waiting to turn our engine back on, and ran into fog which turned into a lightning and thunder storm. We hoped for a boring, non-eventful day but unfortunately that’s not what we got. Our buddy boat was so kind to go slow for us, even though their cruising speed was a bit faster than PIVOT. I repeated the mantra “this too shall pass” throughout the cruise - thanks to Uncle Westby for the saying. Throughout the cruise, our buddy boat was the cornerstone to managing my anxiety as I looked to their boat as a constant; not too close and not too far away to keep me going. It helped take my mind off what was going on aboard PIVOT and something to look forward to. My gratitude to Crustacean for staying with us won’t ever be forgotten.

It was our longest cruising day ever with 79.3 nm for 11 hours and 38 minutes. I now have a deeper appreciation and respect for people who regularly cruise in the ocean. All bodies of water are to be respected and taken seriously, but the ocean has always been the pinnacle of it all. Even though we had good weather that turned to decent weather (which is always expected in our weather planning), our experience extends our respect the ocean.

The sense of relief I felt the morning after our Atlantic cruise was needed. My chest felt significantly less tight and the mounting pressure had been released. It was incredible to feel that we made it past the Atlantic Ocean and are now in some of the most beautiful sections of the Great Loop.

"Life is like the ocean. It can be calm or still, and rough or rigid, but in the end, it is always beautiful."-Unknown

This Week.

We’re spending some time with family while we’re in New York, showing them PIVOT, and doing some “dock projects.” This week we’re looking forward to a very fun and iconic anchoring spot as well as making our way up the Hudson River and into the Hudson River Valley! We are SO excited to be cruising through rivers again, and rivers with a very different topography than the rivers we’ve cruised through on the ICW so far. This is all new territory for us and we’re so looking forward to it!

 Videos. 

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

Timing the tides to New Bern from Beaufort!

Blogs.

Just in case you missed it, we shared our May 2022 Expenses on our website!

• May 2022 Great Loop Expenses

Extra.

We had the pleasure of speaking with Ryan on his podcast The Pursuit of Happiness. We chatted about traveling internationally, how we pivoted to buying a boat, and our current adventure traveling around America's Great Loop. You can listen to it wherever you listen to podcasts

• Listen on Apple Podcasts

• Listen on Spotify

 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. 

We are so grateful for the team of people who helped us with our Atlantic Ocean trips. We had our buddy boat, Andy and Gwen aboard Acadia, who were our on-shore soundboard and helped us plan weather, tides, and swell. Their prior experience in these waterways and their understanding of our concerns made them an invaluable resource for us. We're also incredibly grateful for Bill and Margie aboard Crusteacean who slowed down to be our buddy boat as we did our two Atlantic Ocean trips. They gave me (Jen) something to look at and focus on as we cruised. They were also invaluable. It takes a village.

Peace and love,Jenn + Elliot