Mal de mer, and other French problems
Last year, on a delivery up the Gulf Stream, my uncle Dave got very seasick. We were delivering my father's beautiful new Pearson 424 ketch, Ranger, to its new home in New Hampshire, and we rode some hard road. After a day or two on a frightening, confused twenty-foot following sea, Dave's tummy let loose, and he divided with rest of our time on the Stream expurgating over the rail and folded up in a wretched, waif-like state down below. It was difficult to watch. The only remedy - going ashore and walking it off - was not feasibel. Or possible. And while I'm quite sure Dave's not too thrilled I'm writing about it here, he'd likely agree it's an exceedingly unpleasant state in which to travel: offshore, in dizzying and noisy seas and irredeemably, hideously nauseous.
This afternoon, to celebrate Cataluna's loss to the army hordes from Madrid on September 11, 1714, my hosts brought me and Aurora's father, Amadeu, to hunt for porcini mushrooms in the mountains outside Barcelona. I sat in the back seat as our tiny VW threaded up the Montseny mountain roads. We were talking about Cataluna's bad luck and the new meaning of 9/11 in the US, when I felt a touch of nausea. Slight, creeping. We passed a car pulled over and a little boy was wretching into a bush, his mother patting his back. Before long, we were safely in the beech groves combing through leaves for porcinis, and the nausea had passed. But the image of my uncle and that poor little boy stayed with me: what happens if I get sick in the middle of a 4,500 mile, double-handed race?
In preparation for this race, I've studied seasickness, read countless accounts of how, who and why. In reality it's a crapshoot. My father has never been seasick in his life. He can sit in the wooziest rollers out there and slurp oysters without whiffif of ill-effects. Seasickness is most prevalent in juveniles, and among adults females are more at risk. Interestingly, people in good physical shape are more prone to it then their porky peers, though I've yet to read a convincing reason why. Obviously, people who spend more time at sea are more accustomed to the uneven motion believed to cause seasickness - how many times have you seen a lobsterman leaning over his transom and wretching? But in many popular accounts of open-ocean passages, this doesn't hold true: In Close to the Wind, Pete Goss's excellent account of his solo circumnavigation in the 1996 Vendee Globe, the former Royal Marine writes of battling through seasickness for the first few days of the race. Hard-boiled French sailing demigod Bernard Moitessier, who may well have had gills, wrote of experiencing mal de mer in his classic, The Long Way.
So obviously, I'm looking into prevention and remedy. During the Ranger delivery my brother Conor and I wore the Scopalomine patch, and neither of us had a problem. People swear by the old standby, Dramamine; and my brother Tim - the real sailor of the family - uses Bonine. People also swear by ginger, gin and tonic, and a hard-to-find wonder drug called Stugeron. Any other recommendations?
This afternoon, to celebrate Cataluna's loss to the army hordes from Madrid on September 11, 1714, my hosts brought me and Aurora's father, Amadeu, to hunt for porcini mushrooms in the mountains outside Barcelona. I sat in the back seat as our tiny VW threaded up the Montseny mountain roads. We were talking about Cataluna's bad luck and the new meaning of 9/11 in the US, when I felt a touch of nausea. Slight, creeping. We passed a car pulled over and a little boy was wretching into a bush, his mother patting his back. Before long, we were safely in the beech groves combing through leaves for porcinis, and the nausea had passed. But the image of my uncle and that poor little boy stayed with me: what happens if I get sick in the middle of a 4,500 mile, double-handed race?
In preparation for this race, I've studied seasickness, read countless accounts of how, who and why. In reality it's a crapshoot. My father has never been seasick in his life. He can sit in the wooziest rollers out there and slurp oysters without whiffif of ill-effects. Seasickness is most prevalent in juveniles, and among adults females are more at risk. Interestingly, people in good physical shape are more prone to it then their porky peers, though I've yet to read a convincing reason why. Obviously, people who spend more time at sea are more accustomed to the uneven motion believed to cause seasickness - how many times have you seen a lobsterman leaning over his transom and wretching? But in many popular accounts of open-ocean passages, this doesn't hold true: In Close to the Wind, Pete Goss's excellent account of his solo circumnavigation in the 1996 Vendee Globe, the former Royal Marine writes of battling through seasickness for the first few days of the race. Hard-boiled French sailing demigod Bernard Moitessier, who may well have had gills, wrote of experiencing mal de mer in his classic, The Long Way.
So obviously, I'm looking into prevention and remedy. During the Ranger delivery my brother Conor and I wore the Scopalomine patch, and neither of us had a problem. People swear by the old standby, Dramamine; and my brother Tim - the real sailor of the family - uses Bonine. People also swear by ginger, gin and tonic, and a hard-to-find wonder drug called Stugeron. Any other recommendations?
posted by The Long Shot at 2:18 PM
1 Comments:
I have to believe that the gin and tonic is more about not giving a damn that you're wretching (retching?) over the side than it is about either prevention or cure.
My mother's family remedy, while less surefire, has worked for her through sea and road and chemo. Mostly it's her yelling, "Oh don't be ridiculous, you're not going to get sick!"
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