Phillip Sherwood

The beach is going great and I’ve been accomplishing lots of new firsts. The other night I climbed seven flights of the parking garage in my chair. It was tough but the best climb I’ve had since leaving the Shepherd Center. Tuesday night was the family photo shooting on the beach and having two separate two year olds was proving the near impossible for the photographer. Our hotel is great and very accommodating. I’ve been resting so well that I haven’t had the need to take pain meds however my legs have begun twitching. I’ve taken the beach wheelchair out to the beach twice and even got into the water. It’s definitely not a one man operation as it’s really difficult to get back onto the beach from the water. Last night we went to play putt putt golf and I was actually doing good but I could not get passed the third hole because of the many stairs remaining on the course so I returned back to the clubhouse and pulled out my iTouch to finish watching my Larry The Cable Guy movie and watch the go carts. If there was a way to get into one of those and have it fitted with hand controls, this could be a really fun hobby. This morning was our deep-sea fishing trip that went from 6am to 1pm. The morning started out with clear skies and humidity so damp you felt like you were in a hot Turkish steam bath. We headed down the road in caravan to Zeke’s Landing to board the party boat for a six hour fish slaughter. The first obstacle was how to get me over the four foot side and onto the boat deck. It was tricky but doable. Once onboard, there was another eight inch lip to negotiate to get into the cabin. It too was tricky but was negotiated. As we proceeded underway, I was positioned center cabin facing port & starboard. As the boat passed the jetty and headed into the open water, the boat began to list and pitch making me wonder already if I was going to tip over onto the floor. I decided to change my positioning to get as close to centerline as I could and faced bow to stern. At the midway point, I felt an IC was needed so I did a U-turn to face the stern and did my first IC underway. Trying to maintain my balance while trying to thread the eye of a needle and keeping my balance is one exercise I’m not sure even the shepherd center could replicate but they gave me the tools to figure it out. After I finished, I quickly realized my wheelie bars had not been turned back around when the boat pitched up sending me toppling backwards. As I hit my brother Daniel’s leg, he quickly turned around and righted my chair before going completely horizontal. I went inside the cabin to facilitate doing my IC but mostly to avoid the overspray caused by the bow breaking the 1-3’ swells. We got to our first site in two hours and proceeded to drop our lines. The fish weren’t too hungry so we went to a new spot about 5-10 minutes away. We started pulling in some red snapper off the bottom but the spot quickly went dead so the captain called out on the boat’s loudspeaker to bring the lines back in. A short repositioning later we were cleared to drop our lines but within minutes, half our side of the boat got all our lines tangled and it took about an hour for the deckhand to undo the mess. There certainly is a disadvantage of having to fish shoulder to shoulder on a crowded vessel. When we were all finally untangled, we started pulling in the groceries. It wasn’t long before the captain called over the loudspeaker to pull the lines in and prepare for the two hour trip back to the marina. Although we got about 1½ hours of actual fishing time, we did pull in some nice keepers making the day’s catch worthy of bragging. The trip back went well as I was able to do better at keeping my balance and doing my weight shifts however I couldn’t lean forward to take the pressure off my back. We arrived back promptly at 1pm and unloaded the boat. This time it was easier for the guys to lift me up and get me over the side and back on the dock because we were in low tide and the dock height was a couple of feet to our advantage. We got our fish cleaned there on the dock by the deckhand and came back to the condo. As I write this, I still feel the pitching and listing of the ocean. Overall it was a great experience as I accomplished some new firsts in this new chapter of my life. A boat with a walk through transom and a little more maneuverability would have been nicer but the combined effort of everyone made it worth repeating again…Phillip