Guildive Cruises Blog

SO….

Zander and I all summer were explaining to our guests that we were bound for Maryland this winter to avoid all the snow up north and also Maryland was a bit warmer to get some work done! This winter is not shaping up to be ‘the less snow’ aspect we were expecting. Already since getting the boat out of the water in December we have had 2 snowstorms dumping more than a foot each and one dumping half a foot, and one more expected in the next few days….. oh my.  Lucky for me Zander arrived from Maine on Thursday and the snow started Friday night – so I had help shoveling and knocking it all off the boat.  It snowed from Friday afternoon until Saturday evening dumping around 18″ in total, at least where we were measuring.  Every few hours Zander and I made our way to Guildive and knocked the plastic cover from the inside pushing off the heavy snow weighing the cover down.  By Saturday morning the snow was so high we could not even drive into the boatyard!  We were very fortunate that the boat and the cover did excellent and hopefully is ready for the next snow fall.  So even with all this snow Zander and I have big hopes for the next few weeks to get some projects done on the boat before Zan heads back to Maine.

So our winter of work has turned into our winter of shoveling snow….

Zander finding the driveway!

Especially when we get wind gusts to 60 mph…..

Its never a good feeling when you wake up from the wind gusting and pouring rain and a feeling you have to go check on the boat.  Well that happened to me Monday when the huge wind and rain storm hit the East Coast.  Well I jumped out of bed and zipped over to the boat yard to find the boat’s cover had taken flight.

mangled piping and supports

The cover - not where it should be....

Well by myself, early morning, (after calling Zander in Maine) I knew I could not do much so I went home and ate some breakfast – really bummed out – and waited for the rain to stop!  The cover blowing off is one thing, but I had just removed the two skylights in the wheelhouse the day before (to clean and re-bed them) so EVERYTHING in the wheelhouse that was meant to stay dry… tools, paperwork, sandpaper, etc… was just being dumped on by rain, not so awesome.  We had also been trying to dry out the decks to do some work on her seams, and had already had a great month of drying until the rain came!

After mustering up some energy, and lots of encouraging phone calls from Zander I made it back to the boat and just took it one step at a time trying to fix everything.  I got all the piping back in order and gave a good family friend, Peter Dudley, a call and said HELP.. PLEASE!!  Physically I could not pick up all that plastic by myself so Peter came over and wrestled the plastic with me back to its spot.  Amazingly it went fairly smoothly with not TOO many holes to speak of….. and Guildive is once again sitting pretty absorbing the suns heat!  Thank you thank you thank you Peter.  

Cover back on, just in time for the next rain shower

So after the cover was secure I turned to moping out the wheelhouse and drying everything, a good excuse to give her a good cleaning!

Some of the tools drying on the chart table!

Even with this little setback we are counting our lucky stars that the cover blowing off was the only thing that happened… and it was not much worse.

It has been almost two weeks since returning from Nova Scotia and lots has been happening on Guildive.  As I mentioned before we are doing some work on the existing heads, updating them a bit, and building a whole new head!  So my days have been filled prepping the spaces for the new bead-board we will install.  The new head that will be installed where a bunk was before, so I have been taking (carefully) apart all the woodwork to open up the space.  

What the space was before (a bunk and shelves)

What the space looks like now...

The heads are not the only thing on the worklist I am also spending time in the wheelhouse sanding the overheads for a fresh coat of paint, and you better believe I come home really dusty because gravity works in the wheelhouse (especially when you sand above your head!)  The yellow curtains in the wheelhouse that have seen their day are going to be getting a fresh look, the new ones are all pinned together ready to be sent through the sewing machine, we just need another rainy cold day so I have a good excuse to stay inside!  

Zander is still working in Maine and will be there till the beginning of February, not only working a job all day but also spending each night focused on the computer work side of running a business.  He certainly is not lacking in things to do for Guildive – even if he doesn’t walk around with sand paper all day.

Lots has been happening since we last posted, so here is an attempt to fill in the gaps….

Soon after the rig was pulled out Zander was back to Maine for a few weeks of work.  I stayed in Maryland with Guildive and attempted to get some work done on her between rainy days and a part time job.  Of course it seemed that every nice day I was doing everything except working on Guildive but I managed to get some things done!  The cabin tops got a fresh coat of paint, put on a little differently then last year, hopefully it will stick better and not peel up in huge chunks like it did this summer.  Also all the teak got a winter coat of oil put on both interior and exterior (she looks nice).  While Zander was in Maine for the 3 weeks he certainly did not forget about Guildive working on lots of the paperwork side of the business during his idle time.  

Zander came back to Maryland the first week in December and wasn’t home long before we were gearing up to haul the boat out of the water for the winter.  We decided to do an extended haul-out this winter to address some of the shaft work we would like to get done – and the tides were right – as we are very dependent on the high tides to get to the yard.  We are back at Dickerson Harbor again this winter, and without the masts it made getting her hauled a breeze!  

Up she goes

She was up and washed down in what seemed like no time at all.  When she first came out we were all SUPER impressed as to how little growth was on her, a few barnacles and slime but the bottom paint was amazing!  Last year we did not have enough bottom paint so we scraped by getting only one coat on her so this winter we will order more now that we know how much paint she holds!  We hope to have uniform color with her bottom paint, something we did not achieve going into the water this spring.  

While the boat was still in the slings we pulled the rudder so that later this winter the shaft can come out.  The rudder post is fairly long so we were afraid we would have to dig a hole in the ground to take her out properly… thankfully the yard agreed to keep us slung longer to get rudder business taken care of – I really do not think they were too happy about the idea of a big hole in their yard!

The boat was blocked up between two of the buildings which is great as it blocks some of the wind and now we have our own space to work and not have other boats next to us to bother!  

The next day we turned to building the cover for the winter, similar design to last year – a giant bubble!  We knew that the snow storm that was hitting the east coast was going to potentially start that night so we were under the gun to get it done.  We did not want to deal with a foot of snow on her decks… Luckily we had a nice day to work….

It was great to have the design and precut piping from last year making the day go a lot smoother, except we were building the cover with the boat up in the air and did not have the dock to work from…. but it went smoothly.

Around 10 pm as we were finishing up battening down the plastic and about to turn to shrinking it all tight it started to snow, and you can not shrink the plastic in the snow so we picked up our mess and waited a few days for a nicer day! 

All bubbled up!

So now we are all shrunk tight, and the cover is doing great keeping her decks dry and a little warmth in her.  

Well the holidays came and Zander and I decided to escape reality for a while and recharge heading up to Nova Scotia to be with Zander’s family.  Such a nice and relaxing time and it came at the perfect moment in boat work so now we have energy to start new projects.

I have been back to Maryland for 3 days leaving Zander once again in Maine to do some work.  With many hours in the car we have lots of time to talk about boat projects and the one I have dove into in the last few days has been the heads.  We would like spruce them up a bit making them a bit more welcoming.  This will be a several step project so we will keep posting updates…

Out with the old...

Here are some pictures of Guildive sitting pretty with her bubble!

One great part of the last few months that I have not mentioned is that we bought a new camera, hurray, a long time coming.  Now we will have more pictures to post!

The last few days have been busy turning our motorsailor into a motorboat! 

We docked a little over a week ago and promptly starting working on the making the boat a mess!  Zander spent the week making cradles for the mast and getting all the wires disconnected; and I started a new job – taking me away from Guildive for a few days.  Thursday we woke up early and got to the boat to finish the last minute work needed to be done before the boom truck came.  Once the crane arrived and the straps were set it took about 2 hours to get the masts out and settled on their stands – all went as well as we could have hoped!  The last two days we have spend down-rigging both masts and making sure all was WELL labeled.   The masts themselves weighed total of about 1000 lbs and just the shrouds were about 400 lbs so to get all that weight off in one day was pretty good.  

Here are some pictures of taking the masts out….

Zander attaching the lifting strap for the Main

Up they go...

The crane driver, Dick, doing a great job!

so far so good...

All down!

Now a few big holes

Sunday we took the boat to the Eastern Shore, sadly with much less wind then forecasted.  We did sail out the Severn River and set the spinnaker once we reached the Bay, however, it really did not last long as we had to make some miles to be in Oxford before dark.  Austin Kana and Amy Glibert joined us for the trip taking them away from city life in Washington DC for a few hours!  We didn’t waste much time once we hit the dock getting the sails off as soon as possible… they were dry finally…. and we had help – the Shattucks!!  

So we are here in Easton now catching up on life and trying to figure out the next step for what the winter holds.  

Amy driving... Austin lounging!

"I'm on a boat"

Life is good on Guildive

Zander and the Silver Babe!

We made it to Annapolis!  Typical Chesapeake weather not much wind to finish our trip – but we did get some sailing in for about an hour as we were entering into the Severn River.  We will be tied up here for a few days and heading to the eastern shore most likely Sunday.  All is good and everyone is smiling….

Here are some pictures from Castine taken by a good friend Jesse Henry…

waiting for the boat...

Chalkboard fun

Sailing out to the Penobscot Bay

Coming back to the dock

We have been busy busy busy sailing the boat the last few days with yesterday and today being the first two days the whole trip we have had to run the engine almost all day to make some miles!  But we made it to the Chesapeake Bay anchored tonight in the upper bay enjoying the evening with a beautiful sunset.  We left Mystic with some great wind to make it to NYC almost completely under sail!  We did make a pit-stop in Stamford CT to pick up a good friend of ours Frank and to take a rest for the night.  With a great Nor’easter blowing and us going west we set some sails and had great smiles on our face!  We made it into NYC Sunday midday and docked in Weehawken, New Jersey for the night enjoying a shower and a night in the city – even sleeping in the next morning.  Fueled up Monday, said goodbye to Goldie, and picked up another crew Jason – a good friend from Nova Scotia.  It was more like a ship jump for Jason as we did not want to pay for dockage anywhere in the city – “throw your bag and jump” – not even touching the dock, once on board we were bound for the Jersey coast!  At Sandy Hook we shut down for the night this time under full sail making average 6 knots – just loving Guildive and how she sails.  By 10 am the next morning we were by Atlantic City with clear skies and a beautiful wind – this time coming from where we needed to go – the southwest – BUMMER!  Engine on… making tracks for the Delaware Bay anchoring last night north of the anchorage for the big ships in water shallow enough they could not run us over.   We woke to an early morning with a good 30+ miles to get up to the C&D Canal by noon and not much breeze, really just setting the main and mizzen for looks until the canal.  We made it through the canal, watching one boat run out of gas and one go up on the rocks, and have anchored down just south of the Sassafras River for the night to enjoy our last night at sea for awhile, tomorrow we are bound for Annapolis.