Guildive Cruises Blog

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!  

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! 

 

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…

 

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!

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