Sunday Summary #85

Autumn and a Breath of Fresh Air

Hi ,

Welcome to Scho & Jo’s 85th Sunday Summary. This edition of the Sunday Summary was written aboard PIVOT who is currently anchored off of Kentucky Lake, Kentucky.

Last Week.

The last two and a half weeks have been busy! Since our last Sunday Summary, we left the Illinois River, entered the Mighty Mississippi River, passed by the St. Louis Arch, reached a top speed of 13.3 knots on PIVOT using the strong currents on the Mississippi River to give us a major boost (doubling our cruising speed for about 3 minutes), and slowed down on the Ohio River to basically a crawl. We’ve had a variety of sights outside our window and front door giving us an inside look to some of the interworking of the United States. Cruising down the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers have shown us what a “working river” looks like.

As we arrived at a marina in Grafton, IL, we were met by one of our subscribers, Craig, who greeted us and welcomed us. A few days later, we had the opportunity to meet with two more of our viewers, Deb and Tim, who treated us to a delicious breakfast inside a retrofitted post office in Alton, IL. We also met Ed and his wife who hope to Loop in a few years. It’s been great to meet so many new people and hear their stories about what brought them into boating and the many challenges they’ve encountered while on the water.

We’ve visited a several cute towns including Grafton, Kimmswick, and Paducah. The sights on the midwest rivers have pleasantly surprised us. Its a constant contrast between the large scale of the locks which are sincerely massive to the small, quaint towns. It’s been lovely!

The Great Loop has some unique icons and one of the more memorable experiences was docking at Hoppies. Hoppies is a marina (aka a barge) on the Mississippi River. The owner of Hoppies, Debbie, gave the boaters a route briefing to prepare us for the following days as we cruised down the Mississippi River as well as what to expect in terms of anchorages.

The Mississippi River is not known for its great anchorages. In fact, it’s an area of concern for boaters as they leave Grafton or Alton, Illinois because it begins the 200-mile stretch of no marinas and no fuel. Most boaters fill up on fuel before this stretch and are required to anchor out. It’s no surprise that we love anchoring, but anchoring on the Mississippi was a whole another level. The

water levels are at record lows

, making the gunk holes too shallow for us to anchor in overnight. Access to gunk holes is particularly important as it allows pleasure boaters a place to safely stay overnight on the main river. Barges traveling at night have been known to run aground or hit boats anchored near the shore. One of our nights off the Mississippi River was spent at a lock wall where we joined 8 other boats and had our largest Dock-Tails on the loop.

After 3 days on the Mississippi River and 2 days on the Ohio River, we began cruising down the Cumberland River where we returned to life on anchor. It’s been incredible to be back on anchor as we’ve been enjoying the quiet stillness that accompanies anchoring. The trees have been in full autumn bloom giving us all of the red, orange, and yellow tones as we admire them on the shorelines of Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley.

That leads us to the AGLCA Fall Rendezvous! We gave a presentation on

Anchoring and Loving It!

and had a fabulous turnout. Many attendees provided us with positive feedback and comments, which we appreciated as we’d love to have more boaters join us out on anchor. Preparing for our presentation took us a lot longer than we expected - hence the radio silence on YouTube, but more on that later. We had a wonderful time at the Rendezvous and the highlight was by far meeting so many of our viewers and subscribers. We were blown away by the number of people who said they watch us on YouTube. It really made us smile and was something we don’t take for granted.

We had the opportunity to meet Seth and Jennifer from

On FIRE Family

who are traveling aboard a 45 Cruiser named Witness. Seth and Jennifer paid off their debt, retired early, and decided to go on a family adventure around America’s Great Loop with their two kids, Madeline and Mason. They’re an amazing family for many reasons, but one of my favorite reasons is their attitude that “

tomorrow is not guaranteed

.” Seth experienced back pain when he was 37 years young, which lead to back surgery and the doctors loosing him for 90 seconds. As a cancer survivor, that experience sparked a change in their outlook on life, which makes spending any amount of time with them very special. They are documenting their journey around the Great Loop on

!

This Week.

We’re heading to Nashville! The fall colors on the midwest rivers are in full bloom and we are loving this cooler weather, the brightly colored shorelines, and this time of year which encourages us to slow down a bit. Nashville is a side trip off the Great Loop route because we have to travel on a river to get to Nashville and then travel back, meaning it’s a there-and-back trip. We’re looking forward to enjoying more of the fall colors while also relishing in the rendezvous being done so we can get back to editing videos. We feel the air changing literally and figuratively around us. We’re excited for the side trip as it provides us more time on these beautiful mid-west rivers without any schedule.

"In the end, we only regret the chances we didn’t take."-Unknown

 Videos. 

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

Reflections of 100 Days on the Great Loop! (Hudson, New York)

Cruising our Trawler to the capital of NEW YORK (this is what the Loop's about)

We haven’t posted many new videos (or Sunday Summary emails) in the past few weeks since we needed to switch priorities to the

Anchoring and Loving It!

presentation. Now that the rendezvous and presentation are a thing of the past,

we’re excited to be releasing 3 new videos this week!

 Blogs. 

Here are the latest blogs since our last Sunday Summary:

• Monthly Expenses on the Great Loop - September 2022

 Monthly Stats. 

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

Nights at a marina dock: 9

Nights on a marina mooring ball: 4

Nights on a free dock: 12

Nights on a paid dock: 1

Nights on a free lock wall: 0

Nights on a paid lock wall: 0

Nights at anchor: 4

 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.

 From the Eyes of Ollie. 

This week my humans opened our home to so many new friends. I’m the CWO (Chief Welcome Officer) in our home, so I said hello to everyone. Some people were super nice and gave me a belly rub. We became best friends very quickly. I enjoyed hearing my new friends say “hello Ollie” as they walked past my home. My family also went on a looong hike! It was super fun and was great for all the good sniffs along the way. After some cruises, my parents take me to shore and I get to play with rocks! I loooove getting the rocks in the water after my parents toss them in! I’m a great rock retriever and my parents are so proud of me when I bring one back.

 Gratitudes. 

We do our best to push ourselves. Not too much and not too little. We believe it’s important to live life on the edge of our comfort zone, trying to push it just a little bit at a time. That’s exactly what this presentation was to us. Talking to a camera, especially while on the boat in the comforts of our own home, has become second nature to us. Put us in front of a crowd of 300 people… our nerves soared. Doing things outside of our comfort zone excites us and scares us all at the same time, but we’re grateful for the opportunity to present and attend the rendezvous. We had a wonderful time and really enjoyed ourselves but are glad for the sigh of relief that it’s over.

Peace and love,Jenn + Elliot