Monday 22 January 2007

The motion of the ocean

I have spent a lot of time at sea. A fair proportion of my life in fact, and in a wide variety of vessels: fishing boats, lifeboats, kayaks, yachts, mine-sweepers, aircraft-carriers and nuclear submarines. And I have never suffered from sea-sickness, not even felt queasy. That is until last year, when all of a sudden it hit me. Waves of nausea and projectile vomiting. And it hasn't stopped. It has now become a fairly regular feature of spending time at sea on a lifeboat. Thankfully I have got it down to a fine art. The urge approaches, I get up from the navigating table, stick my head out of the door, job done, back to the chart table. I can even be fairly certain of getting it clean over the after-rail of the boat. Still, I hope it is just a passing phase as it's not particularly pleasant!

2 comments:

haddock said...

My grandfather who served in the navy in the 1890's always said that raspberry jam was good for seasickness; it did not stop you being sick.... but it did taste nicer.
Apparently the only cure for seasickness is to sit under a tree.

lifeboatjohn said...

Some fine ideas Haddock, your grandfather was clearly an man of sound good sense. I assume that taking a bonzai tree to sea wouldn't have the desired effect? Talking of which, my Granfather (who served in the RAF) once told me that assumption was the mother of all fuck-ups...........

Thanks for the plug! Great blog.