Motion of the ocean - will I get seasick?

[Aquahound]

On 12/21/2019 at 10:44 AM, mom says said:

Touched a sore spot, did it? At least no one mentioned the difference between port and starboard.

 

Port and Starboard are fine.  Its when you call it a boat that some people lose their minds. 😉

[Roger88]

Well, the bigger the ship the less likely you will get seasick. My older son is always getting sick on board of our fishing boat but right when we are on a cruise liner he forgets about it. I am not sure that there is any medication to treat this disease  

[bbwex]

A few points on the overall subject as discussed by many.

 

While the size of the ship matters, it is not correct that the bigger the ship the less you will get seasick.  Comparing an ocean liner to a fishing boat is not really relevant, though I would note that if you get seasick on a small boat, i.e. a fishing boat, you might not get seasick at all on a large cruising ship, as the motion is totally different -- same directions, but much more damped and less jerky.  At the same time, the size of the ship in relation to the size of the seas, wave intervals, varying wave trains all interplay to some extent.  In a given sea state, one ship may be much more affected than another ship next to it, and it is not absolute that the larger ship will move less.

 

While a lot of people take a bit of time getting used to the motion, and that number may be 1/3 or higher, most people will get used to the motion after a short period of time, and generally less than a day.  Yes a small number suffer longer, but the vast majority are better in less than 24 hours, and more are not terribly affected by it. And yes, everyone can get seasick under the right conditions -- I can take almost anything, but once when the engine conked out and I was working on it, down below, and it was hot around the engine, the seas were fairly rough, and there was no fresh air, that did it for me that day.

 

The old saying about staying low on the ship is a bit misleading these days.  In days of old, when men were bold, the ships tended not to have too many decks above the main weatherdeck.  Staying on the main deck put you reasonably close to the CoM (Center of Motion).  With today's ships with as many as 17 decks, where the CoM is can be difficult to discern, and is known mostly to the naval architects who designed the ship, though the captain should be aware of its location.  It is certainly not down on the main deck in many cases any longer.  The CoM is like the middle or fulcrum of a seesaw.  If the ship is pitching, there will be little or no motion right at that fulcrum.  If the ship is rolling, there is essentially a sideways seesaw, and again there will be little to no motion right at the fulcrum or CoM.  Again, I wouldn't want to hazard a guess as to where that is exactly on some of these new megaships.

 

One poster was correct that you should continue to eat normal meals, as an empty stomach is going to make you more apt to be sick.  I would not eat greasy or very fatty foods, and don't overeat, but don't skip meals altogether.

 

There are tons of medications and other treatments out there.  Ginger pills, available in most drugstores, will help most people.  Ginger ale is good if it has lots of ginger in it.  The seabands that put pressure on your wrists work for some people and not at all for others.  OTC meds, meclizine, Dramamine, Bonine, etc., are enough for people who have more than a slight problem, and these should be started before you get on board.  The patch was always a last-ditch alternative as it has some slight and some more serious side effects.  I would not presume that you need this option unless you have had serious seasickness problems in the past.  Discuss it in detail with your doctor, and try it out for a week on dry land to see what kind of side effects you will experience.  They can be mild, or they can be fairly dramatic.

 

Lastly, someone else has mentioned that there is a big psychological issue that goes on too.  Some people worry themselves into being seasick, or more seasick than they would normally be.  If you don't get motion sick in other situations, you will likely be fine after a couple of hours.  The story about the passenger who got sick on the dock or at dinner before the ship departed is a prime example.  That wasn't motion sickness that was psychosomatic seasickness --- all in her mind. 

 

For most people, being able to see the motion will ease any discomfort, and/or help it abate.  Watch the horizon either from a balcony, the deck, or anywhere outside.  The fresh air will help as well.  The current best thinking is that most motion sickness is caused by a conflict between the inner ear and the eye.  If they eye sees no motion and the inner ear is feeling motion, that can be a cause of motion sickness.  So be somewhere where you can see the motion.

 

 

[capncarp]

My first cruise gave me absolutely no problems with seasickness.

Flash forward about 10 years and one night I bent over to pick something up and WHAM!  Instant nausea and inability to balance.  Vestibular Inner ear conditions can hit in a moment; I spent 5 days in-hospital and several months of therapy before I got completely back to normal. 

If you feel you may be subject to seasickness, you MIGHT think of using the therapy exercises to build up your resistance to erratic jarring motions. The exercises are nodding and shaking your head rapidly for a number of repetitions starting out at, say, ten in each direction then increasing the count, moving your eyes rapidly left/right, up/down and diagonally with the same building-up of duration and count.  The therapy is designed to overstimulate your inner ear balance system so that comparatively minor motions wouldn't affect it as much.  The exercises and doses of Meclazine (Bonine)

  help quash the queasiness.

Edited April 27, 2021 by capncarp

[Hlitner]

Will you get sea sick?  Maybe yes, maybe no!  Not sure how anyone can give you a different answer. After you have done a few cruises you will have a better understanding as to whether the motion on a ship is an issue.   Nobody can predict how you will do.  

 

Hank

[joand452]

I had been seasick on a ferry one year, as well as airsick, so I asked my doctor for recommendations before my first cruise -- he had been on a cruise right before.  He suggested I take Bonine at bedtime, beginning the night before the cruise (and flight into a certain airport).  It wouldn't interfere with any of my other medications and I could also drink.  I had taken regular Dramamine and non-drowsy Dramamine before, and each knocked me out.  Maybe those would be okay at bedtime, too, but I'm not willing to try!  I'm not very sleepy during the day after taking a Bonine (or the generic) the night before, but don't give me a drink during a sea day!  I'll really nod off then! 😉

 

It's been years since I've had sea legs when returning home, but Bonine helps then, too.

[Futurechangers]

Although I suffered motion sickness miserably in the car since I was a kid🤮, a Maui excursion guide told me the best secret years ago & I have NEVER had a problem since!!  Get ready for it ... take Dramamine LOW-DROWSY at NIGHT before bed (start the night before travel/arrival)😴 ... your body adjusts best to the equilibrium change, you won't have drowsiness the next day (actually feel rested!), and the protection's good for 24 hrs.🤩  Added hint: to save money, ask pharmacist for their over the counter version ... 25mg Meclizine ... it's a bottle of around 100 chewable tabs for just a couple bucks!!🤑  Last rough cruise we went on (waves came over onto our 6th deck balcony😬 & we rescued crewmembers from downed container ship), I was shockingly one of the few people in the dining room able to eat🍽️, and since I wasn't going to need all those tablets, I was handing them out like candy to help others that evening, as the ship store & everything else was closed due to weather conditions.  Those patch people were especially suffering🤢, as the rough weather hit right when they were in between patches (sounded like they had to let their body recover for a day between patches),😖 so that's something to keep in mind in a worse-case scenario.  I swear by this regimen, as I used to have to sit in the front seat & have the driver pull over regularly if the road was even just slightly curvy🥴, but now I've been able to sit in a flying helicopter with no doors🚁(for best pix due to drizzle) on a sky tour with what turned out to be pre-hurricane winds, and realize that I'm having the best no-nausea fun time of my life!! 🙃  Hope this helps others!! 🥰

[EllieDeer]

On 7/28/2021 at 8:00 AM, Futurechangers said:

Although I suffered motion sickness miserably in the car since I was a kid🤮, a Maui excursion guide told me the best secret years ago & I have NEVER had a problem since!!  Get ready for it ... take Dramamine LOW-DROWSY at NIGHT before bed (start the night before travel/arrival)😴 ... your body adjusts best to the equilibrium change, you won't have drowsiness the next day (actually feel rested!), and the protection's good for 24 hrs.🤩  Added hint: to save money, ask pharmacist for their over the counter version ... 25mg Meclizine ... it's a bottle of around 100 chewable tabs for just a couple bucks!!🤑  Last rough cruise we went on (waves came over onto our 6th deck balcony😬 & werescued crewmembers from downed container ship), I was shockingly one of the few people in the employee monitoring dining room able to eat🍽️, and since I wasn't going to need all those tablets, I was handing them out like candy to help others that evening, as the ship store & everything else was closed due to weather conditions.  Those patch people were especially suffering🤢, as the rough weather hit right when they were in between patches (sounded like they had to let their body recover for a day between  patches),😖 so that's something to keep in mind in a worse-case scenario.  I swear by this regimen, as I used to have to sit in the front seat & have the driver pull over regularly if the road was even just slightly curvy🥴, but now I've been able to sit in a flying helicopter with no doors🚁(for best pix due to drizzle) on a sky tour with what turned out to be pre-hurricane winds, and realize that I'm having the best no-nausea fun time of my life!! 🙃  Hope this helps others!! 🥰

 

Hey! 👋
Thank you for your post, I have already ordered a jar of these chewable tablets and I really hope that it helps me as well as you
I have problems since childhood and I really can't stand any transport, really at all! Especially in cars
I am recently on this forum and as you already understood, soon my first sea voyage
The medications that I have already tried do not help me much.
I found a little life hack for myself, it may be useful to you too
Take a lemon on your trip! When you feel sick, you need something sour so that it doesn't feel bad, so chewing on a slice of lemon really helps.
Thanks again, maybe my little secret will be useful to you too! 😃

Edited July 30, 2021 by EllieDeer

[Gail & Marty sailing away]

First cruise wear the braclite.

[Hlitner]

On 2/29/2020 at 1:53 AM, Roger88 said:

Well, the bigger the ship the less likely you will get seasick. My older son is always getting sick on board of our fishing boat but right when we are on a cruise liner he forgets about it. I am not sure that there is any medication to treat this disease  

Over forty-five  years of extensive cruising and boating (on all size vessels) has taught me this is not always true.  Some of the most stable vessels we have cruised have been the small to mid size cruise ships.  Some of the largest ships did very poorly in major swells and wind.  And keep in mind that stabilizers do a good job in dampening rolling, but are near worthless when dealing with pitching.    So much is luck in that movement depends on several factors including wind direction, current, angle of swells/waves to the hull, etc.   We recently were on a 40,000 ton ship (small by today's standards) for two weeks that was a solid as being on land.  We have been on 140,000 ships that moved all over the place.  We have also been on some larger vessels that seem to have too much vibration (cavitation) and a stern shimmy and that actually impacts me more then heavy swells.

 

Bottom line is only experience will show folks how they react.   Funny thing is that after spending literally years on vessels (mostly as a cruise passenger) both DW and I seem to have simply adjusted to the motion and seldom let it both us.  Apparently psychology enters into the seasick thing and some folks simply worry themselves sick :).  We once saw this happen to a young German lady (on a HAL ship) who turned green and got quite sick while we were still tied up in Rotterdam (in a river) with absolutely no movement.

 

Hank

[grumpyjr88]

I used to get a prescription for transderm patches before my cruises and put one on the night before our cruise. By the time it wore off i was used to the motion of the ship. They do cause drowsiness in some people but won't put you to sleep like Dramamine.