High-school sweethearts Elliot Schoenfeld and Jennifer Johnson left their careers to start a travel business. Their first adventure? The Great Loop.
Just a couple of hours into their cruise across the Pamlico Sound, Elliot Schoenfeld and Jennifer Johnson heard an unfamiliar noise: the high-water alarm. Powerful waves that they had not yet encountered pummeled the port side of their Marine Trader 34 Double Cabin trawler, Pivot, as the two exchanged despairing looks that could have sunk the trawler alone.
When the waves subsided, Schoenfeld and Johnson dropped anchor and scurried to the engine room to discover they had taken on a foot of water due to a dysfunctional bilge pump, but, thankfully, there weren’t any leaks. Still, they wasted no time finding mixing bowls and buckets—anything—to empty their engine room before eventually arriving safely at their next destination.
“It was such a contrast to the past, maybe, 1000 miles and two months of cruising with good weather decisions and protected water,” Johnson says. “And then there is this kind of reality check. Like, ‘No, no, no; you do not have this, yet. Mother nature has other plans.’”
Florida natives, Schoenfeld and Johnson were in the middle of their second attempt at one of boating’s most treasured voyages: the Great Loop. Deciding to brave unfavorable weather, the two departed Ocracoke Island off the coast of North Carolina so they would arrive on time for the America’s Great Loop Cruisers’ Association spring rendezvous in Norfolk, Virginia.
For seasoned boaters undertaking the Great Loop (“Loopers,” as they’re affectionately known), an early-morning jaunt through a choppy Pamlico Sound might equate to a refreshing, sunrise jog. Schoenfeld and Johnson, however, are not average Loopers; in fact, they’re not even average boaters.
The 33-year-old high-school sweethearts are the founders of “Scho and Jo,” through which they produce a travel blog and vlog series with a nine-year-old, dolphin-loving feist named Ollie in tow. Save for some sailing lessons in Australia, before Pivot, the two had hardly stepped aboard a boat, let alone owned one.
“There’s risk in choosing to do something, and there’s risk in choosing not to do something,” Schoenfeld says. “And so we thought the Loop was a great way to manage the risk of boating because it has an end goal. So, if we don’t like it, we can do our loop in a year and never be on a boat again. And we kinda have that driving factor to keep going.”
Embarking on the Great Loop as first-time boaters on a budget in 2021 was assuredly a risk yet also a daring adventure. By the time the couple made their wake for their first attempt in Northeast Florida, they had already attuned themselves to that lifestyle. A year earlier, Scho and Jo halted their careers as a software consultant and a city-planner, respectively, to begin a joint gap year of traveling that took them across South America, Australasia, and India.
Then came the coronavirus pandemic and the world’s ensuing lockdowns that kept the two hunkered in an Indian hotel for 100 days.
“We had Vasu, a migrant worker who was maybe 16,” Scho recalls. “He would cook every meal for us, except for dinner, and the hotel owner would [cook us dinner]. It was a very small, boutique hotel with only, like, six tiny rooms. We were the only guests in the hotel, the only foreigners in the city. And the hotel-owner would stay at his house and then ferry whatever they made for dinner.”
When they were finally freed from their room, Scho and Jo yearned for more. The impacts of traveling and simply spending meaningful time together again, combined with the uncertainty of a post-pandemic American work-culture, were profound enough for the two to pivot (hence, the name of their boat) and fully commit their lives to travel.
“We’re only here once. What do we want to do in life? Like, what do we want to chase in life?” Jo reflects. “Travel was something that did excite us, that did bring us joy. It forced us to grow. Just thinking back to the three, four, or five years in Atlanta before versus the one year that we were away—I felt like we grew more in that one year than when we did in the previous five.”
When they returned to the U.S., Scho and Jo (and Ollie) initially deliberated between three off-grid modes of travel during the pandemic: an RV, a van, and a boat, ultimately finding fateful inspiration from a National Geographic piece about the Loop. They left their condo in Atlanta, purchased Pivot in January 2021, and embarked on her maiden voyage two months later, down Florida’s Saint Johns River.
“It was a disaster,” Scho says.
Captain Scho and First Mate Jo’s test drive included collisions with pilings during multiple docking attempts, and, after losing the top of their stern grill, the two wondered if they had overestimated themselves, and underestimated not only the Loop but boating itself.
“We felt really over our heads and really questioned the decision of boating just because of how out-of-control it felt,” Scho says.
They decided they’d, at least, cruise to Charleston, South Carolina, and reevaluate there. Charleston turned into Portsmouth, Virginia, and Portsmouth led to Smith Island, Maryland. There, Scho and Jo would, once again, need to pivot after Scho fell off the boat, breaking his wrist. The two returned to Florida for Scho’s recovery, as Pivot staved off Tropical Storms Henri and Ida in Maryland. Later that summer, they reunited with their boat for some upgrades.
Ahead of their first Loop attempt, Scho and Jo painted Pivot’s bottom, added solar panels and switched to lithium batteries so they could save money anchoring without paying for marinas. This time around, they replaced all of their trawler’s leaky decks, added an electric motor to their dinghy, and upgraded their anchor. In their first attempt at the Loop, fellow boaters and now lifelong friends Gwen and Andy caught Pivot dragging anchor, while her owners were hiking.
It was Scho and Jo’s first memorable experience with the fabled camaraderie of the boating community and by all rights, this moment could have been considered the couple’s proverbial initiation ceremony. Following the completion of Pivot’s upgrades, the two dyad crews traveled south to the Florida Keys together, where Scho and Jo would begin their second attempt at the Loop in March 2022.
“We felt like totally different people starting this trip again,” Jo says. “We started by using a lot of the lessons that we had learned from our boating friends who we traveled southbound with. … We felt more calm and it was less nerve-racking.”
Their nerves remained subdued, for now, as Scho and Jo ventured northward in familiar, protected waters. Along the way, they wanted to venture to places they hadn’t visited in their first attempt. They combined a visit with family in Darien, Georgia, with a saunter over to the city’s Blessing of the Fleet shrimp festival. Then came a pleasant visit to Ocracoke Island before the ensuing scare in Pamlico Sound.
There were plenty of anxious moments after Pamlico Sound, too. After the bilge-pump fiasco, Scho and Jo had to rescue their untied dinghy (admittedly their fault). They also spent six hours untangling anchors in Cape May and crawled across a stretch of open Atlantic Ocean while managing a stalled engine en route to New York Harbor.
For the cruise through New York, Jo’s mother climbed aboard, and, for Jo, a Long Island native, the Empire State passage would prove nostalgic. Jo reflected on her time crossing the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge to visit family in Staten Island as Pivot passed beneath it. They ultimately anchored next to Staten Island and embraced a Lower Manhattan sunset.
From the Hudson River on, “That was really when the Loop got really fun,” Scho says.
Locking became one of the couple’s favorite elements of the Great Loop, despite their early discomfort with docking. By the time they crossed their wake, Scho and Jo traversed 110 locks, including tackling the “Flight of Five” along the Erie Canal. This eventually led them to the Thousand Islands, where they spent three nights at the national park and rendezvoused with a pair of Canadian friends named Nick and Kevin. Enchanted by a natural lazy river among mesmerizing blue waters, the Thousand Islands remain among their favorite spots along the Loop.
“I’m 33 years old, and it was my favorite summer ever,” Jo says. “It felt like summer camp. … It was bliss. We finally had, like, this favorite day on the entire Loop. And we’re like, ‘This is amazing—this is exactly why we bought our boat.’”
Scho and Jo left old friends in Canada to make new ones along the Trent Severn Waterway. To this point in the Loop, the couple had mostly traveled solo and spent all downtime producing content and managing “Scho and Jo.” This Canadian cruise into the Georgian Bay allowed them to close their laptops, exchange stories, and listen to a fellow Looper strum his guitar.
Forty-four locks later, Scho and Jo entered Lake Huron, their first Great Lake, stopping at Mackinaw City and the timeless Mackinac Island. Here, they waited out the weather for eight days, taking a careful reminder from the Pamlico Sound, before embarking on their long passage to Chicago. As they departed for Lake Michigan in the early-morning darkness, they caught a glimpse of the Northern Lights.
“We kind of had all these feelings from the Chesapeake Bay, the Atlantic Ocean, the Pamlico Sound behind us,” Jo says. “We’re just trying to use everything we learned about weather coming up to this point. We had a lot of really good experiences coming after New York City, and [we were] just trying to use everything that we learned to have a safe and enjoyable cruise down Lake Michigan.”
“Our goal was to leave Lake Michigan and get to Chicago without a mental breakdown—or a boat breakdown,” Scho adds.
By this point, Scho and Jo had traveled approximately 3000 nautical miles, essentially half of the Great Loop. With the Chicago deadline behind them, Jo says in their ful-length Great Loop documentary that they “were falling into a routine that felt more like boat life instead of Loop life.” The two opted for more offshoot destinations, like Chattanooga on the Tennessee River and Nashville on the Cumberland River.
Scho and Jo spent Christmas with fellow Loopers (and, by surprise, Jo’s family) in Mobile, Alabama, before making their way to Navarre Beach, Florida to ring in the new year. Upon returning to the saltwater, they were greeted by a welcoming party of dolphins, as Ollie eagerly responded with barks from the bow.
One more passage across the Gulf of Mexico and an easygoing month of cruising down Florida’s west coast were all that now stood between Scho and Jo from completing the Great Loop. In truth, they weren’t ready for this adventure to end. So, instead of a direct, overnight passage from the Panhandle to South Florida, they opted to take the multi-day Big Bend route, stopping atseveral ports along the way. On their final sunset passage, Jo was brought to tears of joy.
“We were just so happy that we had so many challenges throughout the two-and-a-half years—and just finishing it, accomplishing it,” Scho says. “That was the sweet part; the bitter part was it was going to be done.”
Upon crossing their wake in Stuart, Florida, in February 2023, Scho, Jo, and Ollie didn’t have much fanfare—no welcoming party, no friends or family, no big celebration. Instead, they popped a bottle of Champagne at the bow, replaced their battered, white AGLCA burgee flag with a golden one and had a quiet dinner in the city.
They spent the next three months living on their boat in the Keys while still producing their Loop documentary. Afterward, they traveled to Iowa for a seven-day bike ride across the state, to Maine for sailing and to Albania for a road trip, focusing on more physically challenging activities.
Today, Scho and Jo have pivoted to van life. They purchased a 2023 Mercedes Sprinter, outfitted it with live-in amenities and started their current adventure in July of 2024. While their mission as traveling content-creators, now, is to visit all 63 United States national parks by van (save for the overseas ones), their mission as people continues to be to inspire.
This article originally appeared in the August/September 2025 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.
