Shipwrecked!

...for a little while at least. :-)
Shelby and I are in Krabi right now. Yesterday we decided to take a ride on a tour boat to see some of the surrounding islands. It started off being really nice...the scenery here is amazing. (Search Google images for 'Krabi, Thailand') About an hour after we landed at the second island Shelby and I noticed huge dark clouds on the horizon. I am by no means an expert on boating or weather, but it seems to me that generally when you are in a tiny boat that's overcrowded with tourists and you see a storm on the horizon you should head home. But that’s not what we did. Our captain waited for over two and a half hours, until we were right in the middle of a lightning storm to leave. It felt like a scene from a bad movie. Everyone was huddled inside while the waves were rocking the boat all over and the rain was coming down in sheets outside. The pilot had to put on a snorkeling mask to drive the boat. Finally we made it across the bay, but the tide was too low for us to get close to shore and we ended up running aground on a sandbar about a quarter mile offshore, parallel to the waves. Because we were parallel, the waves were breaking against the side of the boat and we almost rolled over a few times. Shelby was standing on the bow in the rain, and I was inside with everyone else. This is when it really started to feel like a bad movie. Every time a wave would break against the side of the boat people would scream and some of the women were crying and a few other people were vomiting, and the boat had open sides so everyone and everything was drenched in seawater. One of the tour guides screamed for everyone to put their life jackets on, and of course that added to the drama. A few people got off the boat and started pushing, trying to free the boat and in the process one guy stepped on a broken bottle and cut his foot. Almost immediately after that the boat was freed, and then the captain tried once again to drive us to safety, leaving the last two men in the water. (Accidently I hope) after a few minutes of trying to find a place deep enough to pass thru, it was decided that the boat was just too big. So we ended up getting picked up on a much smaller boat that took half the people to shore and then returned for the other half. The two guys who were left in the water were picked up by the coast guard.
All in all it was a thrilling experience; not exactly what we were hoping for, but definitely an adventure.