Travels of the Sandwitch

Monday, April 26, 2010

Comments on Comments

Hi all again, I was just playing around with Max's blog settings and I found a way to make it a lot easier to leave comments. Now you can comment by simply clicking the link below. Walid

Saturday, July 11, 2009

A commemorative photo gallery...

RIP our herb garden-the only casualty of the grounding of the boat. We did enjoy some of the basil and dill before its destruction.

Our hydroponic peanut plant survived.

Hello everyone.

We left Beaufort Monday morning to head for Charleston. (Beaufort, SC pronounced Byewfort not to be confused with Beaufort, NC pronounced Bowfort) We left in time to catch the 10 AM opening of the swing bridge which opens every hour and twenty minutes past every hour.

Things were going along great-looking like we would be in by 6 oclock in the evening when suddenly we felt a bump and our boat then dug into the sand. We had grounded our boat due to incorrect charts which told us we had 23 feet of water beneath us when we really only had 4.5! A few really nice people came by to try to help but the tide was going out really quickly. We soon realized the only thing we could do was wait. 4 hours later our boat was free and we were able to float off the sand strip and back into the centre of the waterway. At this point we had to decide if we wanted to camp out in the swampy waterway on our boat or go out into the open ocean and get into Charleston late. (It is not recommended to be in the waterway at night due to bad markers etc.) We didn't want to deal with the mosquitos and flys so we headed into the ocean. Around 11 oclock at night we entered into the Charleston channel. 10 minutes into we got a call on the radio from 3 different captains piloting massive tankers in. On top of standing on and off since 7:30 AM now Walid was trying to drive the boat and avoid being run over by a tanker!!! By 12 we were in and happily anchored.

The next day was our two year anniversary! (July 7th) As a gift to each other we headed to the Charleston place hotel for a few nights. We had a great anniversary and a great time in Charleston.

We are now back on the boat and are planning to head to Georgetown, SC tomorrow and from there on to Myrtle Beach.

We hope you have had a great week and we are looking forward to seeing everyone once we are back.

Intracoastal waterway

Bird nest on a marker

Sunday, July 5, 2009

A few photos

Best travelled herb garden. Began in St. Thomas and since then has survived customs and immigration in Culebra, Vieques, Ponce, Puerto Plata, Punta Cana, Turks and Caicos, Bahamas, and back to the United States! (dill, basil, and a hydroponically growing peanut in yarn from the Peanut Shop in Savannah)

Downtown marina, Beaufort

Cruising under a bridge on the way to Beaufort, SC on the intercoastal waterway. It was a tight squeeze!

Harbour Town Marina, Hilton Head

Harbour town marina, Hilton Head

Hilton Head

Happy 4th of July everyone!

We spent our 4th in Hilton Head and had a blast. We had a quiet lunch out at a restaurant with the 2nd best ribs we've ever had in our lives. After lunch we cruised to the grocery store on our bicycles to get our BBQ fixings. We headed back to the boat with burger fixings, sausages, and lobster tails. We had a fairly quiet 4th-not very social at all! We had our BBQ, let our meal cool while we watched fireworks, hung out for a little while longer and went to bed!

We arrived last Sunday to the Harbour Town marina here in Sea Pines resort. We ended up going straight to the emergency room! While en route to Cape Canaveral we caught a mahi mahi-which I made into ceviche. Little to our knowledge that lime juice (along with celery juice and a few others) that gets on the skin and then is exposed to the sun causes a nasty reaction called phytophoto dermatitus. The result was nasty burning on my skin. Originally we thought that I had a sunburn but it got worse and worse. 10 days later, Friday afternoon, during the 2nd round of blistering we went to the dermotologist in Savannah who identified it as soon as he walked in the door. It was very painful but the Dr. said it should be healed up in 4-6 weeks and eventually the coloration on my hands would go back to normal.
On Saturday it got much worse-worried that it might be infected. We decided to wait it out until Sunday and see it improved.
The pain in my hands was better Sunday morning but I woke up with a horrendous headache and massive nausea which got worse throughout the day. While Walid sailed us here I stayed below deck in and out of sleep and cold sweats. We then thought that maybe it was an infection of some sort in my hands that was affecting the rest of my body. Walid docked the boat here in Hilton Head and was greeted by the dockmaster who gave us a bottle of wine as a welcome gift. (that has never happened before!) The dockmaster called a cab for us and we took off to the ER. After a short wait in the nicest hospital ever-it felt like a country club and we later learned that the locals call it Hilton Hotel-we were in. The ER doctor checked out my hands and did a few tests. Nothing was wrong with my hand, no infection, healing nicely, etc. but I had come down with a case of gastritutus and as a result dehydration as well. Our guess is the combination of heat, hand pain, heavy exercise, and lack of a desire to eat/drink bc of pain created the "perfect storm" and I came down with gastritutus. I was hooked up to an IV to rehydrate but my headache wouldn't go away. Walid asked for something for the pain-we were thinking of advil, aspirin etc. The nurse came in and she gave me the equivelent of morphine!! By 9 oclock at night we were out of the ER but opted for a night in a hotel where we could watch television and recover. By Monday afternoon I was able to have a light workout, by Tuesday night my appetite was back, and by Wednesday I was fully back normal.

Hilton Head has been a lot of fun for us. It is filled with bicycle trails. There is also a nice gym that overlooks a golf course. We spent the week cruising around on our bikes, looking for alligators, running errands, and enjoying having a gym. It turns out one day we ended up riding 25 miles just cruising around on the foldies! There is a movie theatre about 4.5 miles from here so two nights we went to the movies. We saw The Hangover (v. funny) and The Proposal (v. cute.) We rode back and forth on our bikes with head lamps lighting our way along with all of the teenagers who can't drive yet. The week flew by and before we knew it the 4th had arrived! In a few minutes we are off to the general store in the marina to buy eggs and have a small brunch before we take off for Beufort, SC.

We hope that you all had a great 4th of July!