The BEST week of BOAT LIFE in the Florida Keys (with Scho & Jo!) 🛥🌴

When you think of coming to the Florida Keys, this is what you think of. If you missed our last video, we traveled from Austin, Texas to southeast Florida via plane, bus, Brightline train, Lyft and dinghy to meet up with our friends Jen and Elliot, also known as Sho and Joe, for a week of boat life here in the Florida Keys. The Florida Keys are a coral reef archipelago off the southern coast of Florida stretching over 180 miles from Biscayne Bay to Dry Tortugas National Park. The word Keys comes from the Spanish word Cayo, which means small island, and there are a total of 800 keys with five major ones that people visit. We are currently on Key Biscayne, which despite its name is not geologically part of the Florida Keys, but it's going to be our launching off point for the next week of exploring this part of Florida. We have a few goals while we're here. Swim and snorkel in beautiful water, paddleboard, eat key lime pie, but most importantly relax and enjoy our time with our friends. And our plan for today is to explore Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park, which is where we're currently anchoring and we've already seen four or five dolphins just this morning alone. We just saw one right over there, so the day is already off to an amazing start. So Ollie has learned the vocabulary word dolphin and she knows that that means that there's something swimming in the water and she loves looking for dolphins. Absolutely loves it. She's kind of obsessed. So we basically have a dolphin guard dog on boat, so if we see Ollie running around, looking excited, barking, we know that there's a dolphin nearby. First things first, we're going to go paddleboarding. We are currently anchored in what's called No Name Harbor and it's this nice little cove here. It's nice and protected, so it's really calm. Water should be a perfect environment for a sweet paddleboard. Man, like a boss. Wow, you're like going for it. I'm so impressed. Yeah. I haven't been on a paddleboard in probably six years. I did it. You're on. Nice. I did it. Oh my legs are shaking. I know, it takes a bit to get used to. We're doing it. Now I have a friend. Oh my gosh, no. We're getting a tow and it's a disaster. Get in the water. That was funny. It is so salty. I'm getting towed back like this. I'm just laying on the board. Once you're in the water, it feels great. This is so nice. Now that Catherine's gotten in, it's my turn. Besides No Name Harbor, the state park is home to some mangroves and some walking paths. There's a beach, there's a restaurant, and it's home to the Cape Florida Lighthouse, which is actually the oldest structure in the greater Miami area, dating back to 1825. It has survived nearly 200 years of erosion, hurricanes, an attack by Native Americans, and an explosion of lantern oil and gunpowder. They have free tours of the lighthouse every day at 10 a.m. or 1 p.m., except for Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and you get to go all the way to the top, so we're going to go check it out. This lighthouse is 95 feet tall and there are 109 steps to get to the top. The staircase shakes a little bit as everyone's going up and down at the same time. This is a tight spot. Cool. We have visited a handful of lighthouses in the U.S., but I don't think we've ever been this close to the light before. What a view. Look at how blue that water is. We spent the rest of the day getting a bit of work done and enjoying the sunset, which became a nightly ritual for us before Jen and Elliot cooked up a delicious dinner. If there's one thing you can guarantee you all aboard Pivot, besides lots of laughter, is that you'll get to eat some amazing home-cooked meals. Tonight for dinner we are having buddha bowls, which is basically just a bunch of stuff in one bowl and it's really delicious. So we got quinoa, we have like a sauteed mixture of kale and spinach with some garlic, some roasted sweet potatoes and potatoes, because we didn't have enough sweet potatoes, with chili flakes topped with avocado and a tahini dressing. Yes. I don't know. Someone forgot to cook the edamame. It smells good. I really like the tahini dressing and you know you didn't cook the lima or the edamame beans, but they are pretty good. Like it's just a little pop of cold burst in there. I don't know. It's pretty good that way. I might want to keep that for the recipe later. I didn't know you had to cook edamame. Hey, you're so far away. One of our favorite moments aboard Pivot were our slow mornings. Elliot would brew up some coffee and we'd sit outside to enjoy it, watching the sun come up and soaking up the early morning stillness. Not a bad way to start the morning. One of our big tasks for today is to go to the grocery store and you may be wondering, how do people who live on boats go to the grocery store? Well, as you can see we're currently on the dinghy, which is the smaller boat that Jenna and Elliot have, which helps them get to shore and then once on shore they have a few options. There's one in walking distance. They can walk there. They can bike there. They can do grocery delivery. Some marinas have courtesy cars. You can take an Uber, but here in some of the Florida Keys they have a pretty unique option called a freebie. Freebie is a service that the local municipalities here in the Keys offer. It's basically a free electric car pickup that takes you within the key. So it's a really cool tool to reduce traffic and kind of like that in a little bit more green way. So it works just like Uber. I just hailed them on the app and we get into a queue and then whenever they pick us up, they pick us up. This is really nice. I love that. Our driver was great. It was just such a nice ride. More places need a freebie. Florida is home to three national parks, Everglades, Dry Tortugas, and Biscayne, all of which are located in southern Florida near the Keys. We went to the Everglades back in 2020, which was a ton of fun and we are currently really close to Biscayne National Park. And right by the state park we're at is Stiltsville, which are a bunch of old wooden stilt houses that date back to the 1930s and were used for gambling and drinking during the prohibition. There used to be 27 of them, but there are only six left and you can visit them by boat. So we're going to take the dinghy out there and go snorkeling. Unfortunately, due to new national park commercial filming rules, you have to have a permit to film in the national parks and we were unable to get one. So we're going to be enjoying this one off camera. So update, we are getting close to the national park and we just saw two or three sharks swimming. They're not dolphins, they are sharks, which is a little concerning because we're about to go snorkeling and I'm so scared of sharks. That's a little frightening. I don't know about this. Oh my gosh, the shark is swimming right by us. I've never seen a shark in the water before. I don't know if I can snorkel now, but what a cool experience. We ran aground. Thanks for the ride, Elliot. Yeah, anything I can do. Trying to be part of the team. I did get in the water for a little bit. Elliot said he saw a lobster, but I missed it. But it looks like we might have a little bit of rain coming in, so we are going to book it back. I did not go snorkeling, but it is my goal to snorkel at least once while we're here. I will do it. I think I just need a sunnier day, so getting in the water is a little less daunting. And maybe less sharks too. And maybe, yeah, and maybe less sharks. We just saw a giant ray. That was so cool. What an awesome wildlife day. We thought we were perfectly timing it to leave, to miss all this rain, and as you can tell, we did not miss a thing. Everybody's in good spirits except for Ollie. We just got back to No Name Harbor, and we're greeted by a dolphin that swam right by the dinghy and some boats collided, so things are very exciting right now. And it's still pouring on us. When it rains, it pours. What an adventure. What an adventure. Made it back to Pivot safe and sound, just a little, little wet. That was a fun time. That was good. We are finally all dry. We've been playing a very fun game of Catan, but the sun is about to set, and it looks amazing, so we're back in the dinghy. It's still a little wet in here, but we're going on a little sunset cruise. Yesterday was a bit of a windy day, so we just had a work day here at the anchorage, plus a little bit of entertainment. We have a windstorm blowing in today, and the boat next to us in the anchorage is getting a little too close for comfort. We could probably reach over and shake their hand right now. And today we're going to be cruising from Key Biscayne down to the Keys, and this is our first time truly cruising with a Pivot crew, and we are so excited. But before we go, we need to get the boat ready. I think we just found some buried treasure. Yar, we found Davy Jones' locker. We were pulling up our anchor, and then there was a line coming off. Jen started pulling on it, pulling on it. It got heavier and heavier, and then there was one, I guess a crab pot or crab trap, and then we kept pulling on the line, kept pulling on the line, and then a second one came up, and they were really heavy. Some park employees were coming by, so we disposed our treasure with them. We asked them how old they thought they were, and they said maybe eight months. I was thinking more like 30 years or something really cool like that, but only eight months. They said those are actually lobster traps, and the fishermen just come in here, take their lobster out, and then just throw their traps overboard. What the heck? And now we're officially off. Let's go cruise for the Keys. So this app is called Navionics. This is the app they use to navigate the waters. So right now we are the red arrow, and you just kind of pick your spot you'd like to go. So we're going to try to go to this little cove, and so you hold down your destination, and then it finds your route for you, just like kind of like Google Maps. So it even knows where the deep water is, the shallow water, so it goes around all those parts and gives you a safe route there. So we're going to go around this way, dodging all the shallow water, making our way here. Before we actually head south towards the Keys, we're actually going a little bit north on Key Biscayne because we have some very special chores to go do. It is pump out day. We have two black water tanks on our boat, so with guests. With four people using them. This is one experience. We do not get in the van. We don't have black tanks. We have a composting toilet, so we have nothing to pump out. Last night we used one of our two 50-gallon water tanks. We have a total of 100 gallons on board. So today we are, while we're pumping out, we're also going to be refilling our water. So there is like a charge typically, especially this far south to fill up water, but here it's free. But the pump out was five dollars and it's customary to tip, you know, especially he's great, super friendly. Let's cruise. As we make our way south down to the Keys, we're going to be cruising through Biscayne Bay, which the majority of is in Biscayne National Park. And Biscayne National Park is unique in that 95% of it is underwater, but there are a couple spots above water that you can check out. One of them being Stiltsville, which we visited a couple days ago, and the other is the Boca Chita Lighthouse, which is where we plan to dock tonight. So since the rest of the day we'll be inside the National Park where we can't film, we're going to fast forward to tomorrow when we plan to leave. We are officially out of Biscayne National Park, so you guys can come along with us again. But yesterday was such a fun day at the park. We got there and we anchored really close to the Boca Chita Lighthouse area and we basically just relaxed all day long. It was a true Sunday fun day. Adam and Elliot went and snorkeled near the mangroves and saw some fish. Jen and I just kind of rafted on like sup boards and floaties just attached to the boat and just hung out on the water all day. Got a little bit too much sun, but it could have been worse. But it was just such a gorgeous day out on the water. We did visit the lighthouse at sunset, which is beautiful as well. And today we are cruising about six hours from the park to around the Key Largo area, specifically to John Pennekamp State Park. We're about halfway through the cruise and so far so good. We are about to enter the Atlantic Ocean. We've been cruising primarily in protected waters so far, but we are leaving Biscayne Bay, entering the Atlantic. We can see the ocean off in the distance, which is kind of crazy for us. We're very particular and very cautious when entering into the ocean because we're very cautious cruisers. We're in the Atlantic! This water is insane. You can see all the way to the bottom. We saw a sea turtle a little bit ago. Holy cow. The Florida Keys have the only living coral reef formations in the continental United States, and these took over 5,000 years to form. Unfortunately, in the 1950s, due to people taking pieces of the coral reef to sell as souvenirs, many of them have been haunted. So we're going but that did spark protection of them. And before we head to John Pennekamp State Park, we're going to go snorkel at one. Three, two, one! That was great! That was perfect. This is so much freaking fun. We have seen literally hundreds of fish and they are the craziest colors. They look like Mardi Gras fish. They're like purple and yellows and greens. Like all in one. It is amazing. Oh my gosh. This is one of the best days of my life. That is so cool. What a dream come true. That was ridiculous. When we got into the water, we had no idea what to expect. And it was just so magical. We saw so many different colored fish. We saw structures underwater. There's this really neat lighthouse. And then the best part, we swam with two turtles. Oh my gosh. That was just truly one of the most incredible experiences of my entire life. Wow. Oh gosh. That was so awesome. I challenge you, Catherine, to a cannonball contest. Bring it on, Elliot. Good job. We all win. This has been such an epic day. I could stay out here all day long. I cannot wipe the smile off my face. The amount of times I've said, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, this is amazing. I've totally lost count. All right. Now we have two and a half hours to John Pennekamp State Park. Cruise from the snorkeling area to the state park. We have some pretty good-sized swells. As you can probably tell, the boat is a-rockin' and a-rollin'. We're trying to get back to the channel closest to shore, but it's a little bit of a bumpy ride right now. We have Jen and Adam at the bow. I think it just feels more comfortable down there. But Elliot and I are holding it down up top. After some rougher seas, we made it into the channel and had a smooth cruise the rest of way to our home for the night, John Pennekamp State Park, which has a gorgeous entrance that takes you through the mangroves. This park is named after John D. Pennekamp, who was a Miami newspaper editor who contributed to the establishment of Everglades National Park and the preservation of this park. This park is the first undersea park in the U.S. and has about 178 nautical square miles of seagrass beds, coral reefs, and mangrove swamps. We're staying on a mooring ball tonight, which is what we also hooked up to at the reef, and these are popular in the Keys because they help protect the seabed and coral reefs. With a little bit of daylight left, we're going on a little dinghy ride through the mangroves to a very, very special spot. All right, ready to see the surprise? We're showering. You probably thought we were going to take you to some epic viewpoint, but no, we are taking showers, which for us is just as exciting. We have taken one shower since being on the boat, which was very nice, but it has to be super, super quick. But this shower, I'm going to take my sweet, sweet time. This is nice. Oh, yeah. One thing that living in a van has taught me is to never take a long, hot shower for granted, and that shower was perfect. It had amazing water pressure. It got so hot, I feel like a million bucks right now. Good news and bad news. My guess the bad news is no hot water, or you used it all. Good news is there are showers. Bad news, it's ice freaking cold. All right, now we got mentally prepared. Just kidding, it's super hot. I was going to say, you seem too peppy to be coming with bad news like that. No, it was an amazing shower. One of the best campground showers I've ever had. Oh, you're looking clean. Fresh, squeaky clean. Was it nice? Oh, amazing. Could have stayed in there a couple more minutes, but I am getting hungry. As if today couldn't get any better, we are ending the day with tacos. We have another cruise ahead of us today, but before we head out, we're going to explore a bit of the park by paddle board. We have decided to try something. We are going to have both of us on one paddle board. We are within the weight requirement, so I think it should work. It's either going to be really, really fun or a complete disaster. It's just making you share a paddle board. This was 100% our decision. Jen wants everyone to know they did not force us to do this. We chose this questionable decision all by ourselves. There's a few paddling trails here in the park, so we're going to go on a little exploration. I'm not going to go too far or get too crazy, but it should be beautiful and it should be fun. I've learned a new term recently called passenger princess, and that's 100% what I am in this situation. I feel like one of those guys in Venice paddling those little canal boats. The gondola. Gondoliers. That's me. One of our goals during this paddling session was to find a narrow channel of mangroves to paddle through, and I think we found the one. We'll see if it works out. Oh, oh gosh. Yeah, never mind. I think we're going to turn around. I think I might dead end or we're just going to get attacked by twigs. We are trying to eliminate Jen and Elliot having to come save us this morning. That's our number one goal. That's our number one goal. Don't fall in and don't need to be risked. Every time we change kind of how we're sitting, it's like, is this the moment? Is this the moment we fall in? We have made it back to pivot and we did not fall off the paddle board, but now we have to get back on the boat without falling off. We did it. Yeah, nobody fell in. That was fun. Yeah, it was a ton of fun. Especially for me because I didn't have to do anything. Today we are cruising five hours to Isla Morada. We're a couple hours into our cruise through the Atlantic Ocean and we have been lucky that the conditions have been pretty much perfect. There's a lot of planning and knowledge that goes into safely cruising, especially through the ocean, but we are very thankful for our experienced captain and crew. They make it a really enjoyable experience to cruise on the ocean and anywhere as a passenger. It has been a breeze and amazing. Obviously not every day of boat life is this chill and relaxing, but compared to some of the driving we do in the van where we're just on crazy busy highways and people are cutting you off and just zipping all around and it's really, really stressful. This is just so peaceful. I'm just loving these cruise days. Just being on the water. We've been going by the keys the whole morning and it's just been perfect. Shortly after we exclaim how awesome and smooth the ride has been, we got to slam on the brakes and dodge some rocks that are just below the surface so we, you know, don't run into them and, you know, sink out here. I'm feeling a little stressed, but overall good. The problem is the water is so clear. It's like a first world problem that you can't tell how deep or how high these rocks are. They look massive and we saw one that was basically seven feet. Like there were seven feet between us and the rock, which means like we were just above it, which is a little scary. So we're just taking it nice and slow. It's the motto in the boat. Nothing happens fast. Just slow down. Nine feet! Crushed it! As we mentioned, there are 800 keys in the Florida Keys with the main ones all being connected by bridges, the longest of which is the seven mile bridge, which connects Marathon to some of the lower keys and we are about to go under our first bridge here in the Florida Keys. It is nowhere near seven miles. It's actually pretty short, but it's still a bridge, so it's still exciting. After crossing under the bridge, we have entered the Florida Bay and we have about 45 minutes to our destination of Isla Morada. There's only one way to break in a new anchorage. One amazing thing about this anchorage is that there's a happy hour spot just right across the way, dingy distance away, called which supposedly has cheap drinks and also food to consume. We got $1.50 beers, $3.75 margaritas, and whatever these virgin drinks cost. And we got french fries! We got four total for all four of us. One each! Cheers! It is our last full day with Jen and Elliot and we have a couple of fun things planned and first up we're getting some key lime pie. Key limes were brought to the Americas by Spanish and Portuguese explorers in the 16th century and they are smaller and more tart than regular limes and can only grow in warmer climates like here in the Keys. They are no longer grown commercially here, but they're still very very popular, especially in pie form. Key lime pie is said to have originated here in the Florida Keys, although there are multiple stories of how it came to be and one of those theories is that fishermen created it in the late 1800s and for our key lime pie we went to a spot called Bob's Buns. Whoa, this is, I think the best word to describe this is it's really creamy, almost like a cheesecake kind of consistency there. I do taste the key lime pie, but it's not overly tart or overly key limey. I have not had many key lime pies so I do not have much to compare this to, but yeah, the texture of it is delicious and you get a little bit of the lime flavor and just a lot a lot of sweet flavor and I just love the graham cracker crust. It's super thin so it's not overpowering and it just gives it a different flavor. It kind of adds a slight, very slight savoriness to the sweetness of the actual pie filling. You can't come to Bob's Buns and not grab one of his buns and he's got some big buns. I like big buns and I cannot lie. Which one's bigger? Your face, but just barely. Just barely. This is a really good cinnamon roll, but it's a little different than what you would, what you think of as a cinnamon roll. The ones I think of are the ones in the Pillsbury tube that are really moist. This one isn't super moist, but as you can see there's lots of cinnamon in there and there is tons of frosting on top of there so it gives you that perfect cinnamon bun bite. How do I eat this? That is very messy to eat, but it's really good. I got a lot of frosting and the frosting is delicious and it's a super like, just like thick and kind of cakey cinnamon bun. So there's a lot of just bun part of it, but when you get like that perfect ratio of the frosting to the bun. We also got some savory breakfast because we feast. We just grabbed another freebie to a spot called Robbie's which is very, very famous here in the Keys for something pretty unique, feeding tarpon. Tarpon are a very popular game fish here and this is actually the tarpon fishing capital of the world. These fish can grow up to eight feet long, 280 pounds and can live over 50 years. It's $2.50 per person to enter and five bucks for a bucket of fish. They say the pelicans are very aggressive and to not feed them. We haven't even tried to feed a fish yet and they're already trying to come after us. You're obviously going to see all these pelicans, but as soon as you look in the water there are some massive tarpon down there. Holy cow. I think these tarpon are as long as me. I knew they were big, but they're way bigger than I imagined they would be. They're tarpon under there. There are sharks under there. One, go. Get, get. Move, move, move, move, move, move. Come on, buddies. I dropped it, dang it. Round two. I'm gonna try not to drop this one. Here you go, buddy. Jen is taking care of business. She is scaring all the pelicans away. I think I'm more scared of them than even the shark that was in the water. Here we go. So scared. Come on. Just take it. A little lower. No. I'm trying. I chickened out. I dropped it. They are so scary. This is super thrilling. We did not have feeding tarpon on our Florida Keys bucket list, but I'm so glad that we're here and we're checking it off. You screamed like a little girl. Yeah. Thrilling is the right word because like they just like rip out of the water and like snatch it right out of your hands and it just scares the gibies out of you. Determined to not drop this one. Come on, guys. You know you want it. You know you want it. Yeah, you do. I drop it every time. I'm so scared down there trying to feed them and the pelicans are coming up under my chest. He just bit your arm. Yeah, he bit my arm. It's so violent when they like rip out of the water. That was a lot of fun. Very scary, but a lot of fun. My anxiety is like through the roof right now. There are good ships and there are wood ships and there are ships that sail the sea, but the best ships are friendships. So, cheers to you and me. Cheers. After eight amazing days of boat life, today we are leaving Jen, Elliot, Ollie, and the Florida Keys. Thank you. Thank you. Love y'all. Thank you guys for visiting us. Thank you for having us. We love y'all. You're the best. Can't wait to hang out again. We miss you. We can't wait to see you soon-ish. Jake! We just took a two-hour Flix bus ride to the Miami airport, which officially marks the end of our time here in Florida. A huge thank you to Jen and Elliot for hosting us aboard Pivot and for giving us such an incredibly fun week full of some of the most amazing memories we will cherish forever. Jen and Elliot are one of our biggest support systems, and we are so grateful for their friendship and just all the joy and laughter that they bring into our lives. They will be joining us for a very big adventure for our 50th state later this year, so stay tuned. In the meantime, make sure to go check out their channel to see the final part of their Great Loop journey. They're also going to have some really awesome things happening later this year that you will not want to miss. But for now, we are heading back to Texas for just a few days, and then we are going to be embarking on our longest travel journey ever to a brand new continent for us for the next six weeks.