Sea sick … why do I do it?

I don’t know why I cruise; I get sea-sick quite easily … but it’s something I’ve never suffered from on all the cruises we’ve done.  I was today years old when I realised that that’s because we’ve never sailed from the UK; we’ve always flown to a Caribbean island and sailed from there. 

Sailing from Southampton in January with ‘moderate seas and three to four metre crested waves’ was enough for me to question my sanity … what are you doing you fool?!

I could feel the ship gently rocking and hear the waves lapping the sides of the ship during the night.  Your inner ear’s balance mechanism is a devious thing, how it communicates with your stomach and screams “evacuate, evacuate!” is beyond me, and I often wonder whether it actually helps, having an empty stomach.

I remembered that before we sailed, at the last minute, we had bought seasickness tablets, I gobbled one down and went for breakfast in the buffet lounge.  Trying to do the mind-over-matter trick I choked down two slices of dry bacon on a slice of white unbuttered dried-out bread before admitting defeat … I picked up my bag “nope, gotta go!” I said to my husband hoofed it back to the cabin. 

I have worked out, after many years of working for a ferry company, that my head has to be doing the same thing as the ship for me to get any relief at all, ie don’t just sit down because you’re head is still free and can move contrary to the ship, you need to be laid down, connected to the ship and at that point your head is doing what the ship is doing.  The only drawback with this method is that after half an hour or so, you feel OK again, stand up to participate in some event and another half hour later find yourself laid down again.  Again, experience has taught me to write the day off and spend it laid watching TV, reading or (as warned by the sea-sickness tablet manufacturer) becoming drowsy.

Anyway, lots of snoozes later we went for dinner.  It was a black tie evening so we donned something glitzy feasted on herby chicken terrine and fillet steak.

I beat a hasty retreat to the cabin to take more sickness pills and lay down!

Anyway, joy of joys, Sandra is on the cruise … the blue head appears!

We’ve realised that we are almost the youngest on this cruise and that we bring the average age down to about 75. Surely, with the best will in the world, we can’t possibly make it home with the same number of passengers that we started with?!

Dead Man’s Bingo anyone? 🙂