How do you handle/prevent seasickness?

Writing an article on this topic and looking for tips/remedies from boaters. Reply with yours. Thanks!

spend a lifetime in occupations that involve rock and roll.....

all others, take them to calm water.

some remedies work for some but not for all, for some, no remedies work at all.

the only one that makes sense to me is a virtual reality viewer that can sync with a persons inner ear sensation.

or doing something that puts the person unconscious.


But the dryer sheet conspiracy types will say chewing on them or sleeping with your head wrapped in them works...or is that to keep mice out of your brains...

Sitting under a tree is said to be a good remedy.

For almost everybody, seasickness will pass after the third day.

If you are prone to it, and fortunately I am not, there is a logical reason.

If you are looking at the boat, the instruments, the wheel, the floor etc. it is moving with you, so telling your brain that everything is stable and fixed. However your inner ear fluid, your endolymph, is moving like crazy. So your eyes are telling your brain all is stable, and your ear is saying, holy shiat. all hell is breaking loose, and that confusion creates seasickness. It also happens in cars, trains and planes, where there is a solid chamber moving with you, which is being moved externally.

So when I have people on board who are starting to get seasick I simply tell them to watch the horizon. By doing so their eyes see the boat movement versus the horizon that matches what the ear feels. And after a while the seasickness eases.

I can attest after a career at sea, after the third da, seasickness may just changes intensity....but is not a cure....even if puked and zombied out for 3 days, if conditions are bad, they relapse.

Also staring at the horizon may fix things for a small percentage, but very small and then not forever if conditions are bad.

If there were simple cures that worked for everyone, the USCG and US NAVY, let alone all seafaring groups would have it down to a science, which they dont.

Bruce K has the only good remedy.

I ran a charter fishing boat for a while, dealt with seasick passengers almost every day.
I’ve never been seasick, but it does look like a miserable experience, having your face turn green is bad enough without puking all day too!
The clients most likely to become seasick were the ones that showed up with a big bag of McDonald’s junk and nursing a hangover.
The common OTC meds work well, especially if taken at bedtime the night before, then bolstered in the morning with a half dose, and another at noon.
Less drowsiness involved with the half dose.
Dissolving a chewable vitamin C under the tongue at the first sign of nausea works for some.
Benadryl or whatever OTC antihistamine works well for some too.

Two kinds of sailors: Those that have been seasick and those that haven't been seasick yet.

I have one pax who can handle really rough water like a champ - while underway. Put the boat on the hook and 6" ripples will have her calling O'Rourk. Every trip she has a new "cure" - acupressure and magnetic wristbands, lime juice, dramamine, scopalomine, mentholatum, feet in icewater, deep breathing. All with no noticable benefit.

My experience is, as psneeld said, "some remedies work for some but not for all, for some, no remedies work at all." There may be a bit of placebo effect for some folks with these varied preventatives.

My guess is that some people are predisposed to the effects of inner ear, visual, and other sensory conflicts. There may also be a learned coping mechanism aspect - my unscientific observation in the Navy was that new guys were more prone to it than experienced hands.

The older I get, the less susceptible to sea sickness. Last time was nearly 55 years ago, and I prayed for death.

Dramamine just came out with a"natural" pill that is essentially ginger extract. Em loved it, especially for the less drowsy effects. Gabe prefers meclazine. Both of us only need meds when it gets BAD.

Here's a short article based on a survey taken during a trans Atlantic race that discusses the various remedies:

What are the best remedies for seasickness?

Three years ago I helped a guy take a boat from Seattle to Stockton, CA. Second day out I got my first ever case of seasickness. I tried another guy's seasickness watch and it didn't help. Then we stopped at a port with a Costco nearby. They had some "Motion Sickness" pills so I got them. Took a double dose before heading to bed that night and a single pill the next a.m.


No more seasickness from that point on.

The saying we had sailing the northwest coast of Ireland was "there is only one thing worse that thinking you are going to die from sea sickness, and that is you are not going to die!"

Whenever a crew member was being sick over the lee side someone had to hold onto their legs. Not because they might accidentally fall in, but because the urge to just let yourself slide gently into that water rushing by and end the agony was intense.

On one race from Lough Swilly to Melmore my father got really sick and eventually had to throw up. As he was being sick he felt his teeth coming loose. So he put his hand in the stream of sick and caught them. Everyone else in the cockpit immediately became sick!

ginger is about the best help i have heard of and seen (USN 12 years) out to sea for around 8 of them...
it seems for most a slow gentle roll is worse, in the hard "bashing" stuff everyone seemed to fair a little better over the years, but the slow gentle swells would send most afflicted to the rails (600 foot amphib assault ship)

we had this one poor kid, he would turn green as soon as we pulled anchor, and staid that way till we dropped again.... he didnt last a full cruise

but, back to the point, ginger has a long and trusted ability to ease nausea, ginger ale, ginger gum, pills etc... but i think the fresher and less processed stuff is the best

i spent around 8 years at sea, and never once got even the slightest queasy, even on the "morning after" hangover days...... lol, i hope it stays that way when i get back out there

Fear works quite well too.

We spent 4 straight days hand steering through survival conditions. Bad stuff. We should have joined the graveyard of the Pacific. But I warned my two crew what would happen if they got seasick and lost concentration. Day 5 things calmed down nicely and then they started throwing up.

Doesn’t sound very scientific or chemical, but that was my experience.

I've used Motion eze it worked for me

Marijuana cookies and a cup of tea May not get rid of the sea sick feeling but you wont feel a thing when you cut your wrists .

life long sailer Tristan Jones (died a few years ago) had tried everything all over the world with no success. He said the best thing to do is eat canned peaches. They taste almost as good coming up as they did going down.

As our Cheoy Lee 46 has a nice, round bottom, when conditions are right (aft, quartering seas being the worst), we can develop what amounts to a nauseating roll for my wife. She tries the stare at the horizon trick, but that only lasts so long. If the motion persists, she just heads down the aft stairs to the aft cabin and lies on our bed. It's the spot with the least amount of motion on the boat where she can get comfortable. Doesn't make the seasickness go away, but it makes it more bearable.

If we know in advance we'll be dealing with anything like that, Motion Eze has worked for her.

I've been plagued by terrible motion sickness since I was a baby. As a youngster I was taught by my dad to take the helm when starting to feel green and, interestingly, have never felt sick on my own boat, even during full storms. Though I have felt like jumping overboard to end it all while aboard other vessels, I've had the best luck with (a) candied ginger, (b) lying down/sleeping, (c) asking to take a stint at the wheel, and (d) giving it a couple of days.

Now, since I'm a nurse, I'm bound to refer you to the literature rather than simply supplying my own anecdotes: A recent overview of the problem in Medscape.

I find it a great excuse to buy Newman O’s ginger cookies. My wife is susceptible to motion sickness, she can’t read in the car for more than a few minutes. She does the looking where we’re going trick and it helps a lot. I got queezy once crossing the bar out of Westport, usually I’m fine.

Dave & Suzie, definitely don't attempt to exit the Golden Gate on an ebb tide. Or maybe not ever. Every time on the lightship sailboat races on a 28-foot sloop (SF Bay to lightship outside the gate 12 miles and return) in the 1960s, I became sick enough to wish for death.

psneeld said:

I can attest after a career at sea, after the third da, seasickness may just changes intensity....but is not a cure....even if puked and zombied out for 3 days, if conditions are bad, they relapse.

Also staring at the horizon may fix things for a small percentage, but very small and then not forever if conditions are bad.

If there were simple cures that worked for everyone, the USCG and US NAVY, let alone all seafaring groups would have it down to a science, which they dont.

Bruce K has the only good remedy.

Click to expand...

Yes. Exactly.

One thing I have meant to write about is what I thought was sea sickness: mostly nausea, feeling like crap, etc, turned out for me not to be.
On my last passage, I had just finished making Christmas dinner when I got "sea sick". The week before, having replaced the hydraulic hose in the middle of the Atlantic, while taking a shower to wash all the ATF off of me, I became so "sea sick" I couldn't even dry myself off.
I rested on bed for 10 min; tried to get dressed and couldn't. i wanted to check the boat before going back to Ops normal, I couldn't. Had to tell Micah to do it.
After an hour, I was fine.

Now, I had been taking sea sick medicine 75% of the time or wearing the scopolamine patch.

After i arrived in Martinique, looking at my bad episodes of sea sickness, I realized, I was having a reaction to the stress. In other words, when I got stressed, adrenaline flooded my body and it was the body (para-sympathetic system) going back to normal which was causing my sickness.

So I decided I had a stress issue (Christmas dinner was stressful because Micah really cared about it, while I didn't, so I wanted to do a better job than normal).

Leaving Martinique for Panama, another 1600 nm of big seas, I decided to not take any medicine any more. I also started taking a shower in the morning and evening, no matter what, because I had realized that the shower calmed me down.

It worked, 2,500 miles later, I havent been "sea Sick" since Martinique.

As far as remedies go, I can't say for sure. Possibly, having a positive frame of mind works. I just tell myself that I don't get seasick under any conditions, and so far so good.

One trip on the local ferry to Kangaroo island, I knew we were in for a rough ride when they chained down all the vehicles. Sure enough, we got hit with HUGE swells. Of the 200 passengers on board, I'd estimate that 195 were sick, - everywhere. My wife and I weren't sick, but the smell and sight of everyone else losing their lunch, certainly made me lose my appetite.

If right handed put ear plug in left ear, if left handed put ear plug in right ear.

" ginger has a long and trusted ability to ease nausea, ginger ale, ginger gum, pills etc... but i think the fresher and less processed stuff is the best"

DITTO

If I am a passenger I have a tendency to get seasick if it's snotty.
If I am running the boat I am normally fine. For those times in a bad beam sea (side to side rocking) I can sit sideways so MY motion is up and down and that prevents me from getting sick.
Ginger pills have helped me in the past.
If I get seasick, I am fine after about 10 seconds in calm water.

I eat candied ginger. It's available in grocery stores in a pretty glass jar for $$$ or at Asian grocery stores in plastic containers for $.

Many brands of "ginger ale" use artificial flavor, not real ginger.

I am not prone to it, but have sick it a very few times. Always on a boat I am not operating and always on larger vessels. For me, one transderm scopolamine patch worn until if falls off does the trick. No more mal de mer after that, for the duration of a trip. I did long range tuna trips of 16-18 days into Mexican waters and the "downhill" run with following seas seemed to trigger me.

It's not a short term fix, and if I keep wearing the scopolamine patches they make me feel tired and affect my vision. I put one on the day before the trip, wear it until it falls off in the shower. That's my trick

I have always been susceptible to seasickness. Then I started using the scopalomine patch. Worked wonders for me. I have been on boats were the captain was sick and I have been fine with the patch.

Then I found out that the scopalomine came in a pill form. The pill is even better. I can wait to see how conditions are or if I start to feel a little off. As long as I can keep the pill down for a half hour I am good to go! The patch you must apply well before hand.

They stopped making the scopalomine pill but I can have a whole season of pills compounded at the local drug store for about 50 bucks. The other great thing about the pill is unlike the patch you can regulate the dose. I often find that a 1/2 dose pill will do the trick and cut down on some of the side effects.