“Seasickness: at first you are so sick you are afraid you will die, and then you are so sick you are afraid you won’t die.” — Mark Twain
“It’s the price of admission.” Clemens, the penguin guy, and I were talking about crossing the Drake. He’d told me that his daughter gets seasick something terrible, that’s why he’d not brought his family to the ice with him yet. I was sympathetic — seasickness was my biggest worry, more so than sharing a tiny cabin with strangers, more so than cold and wet, more so than, well, anything I had to tackle to get south. A week or so earlier, I’d been chatting with a couple from Detroit while walking through Tierra del Fuego National Park. “We had reservations for Antarctica, but my husband has developed vertigo,” the wife explained, “and we decided we’d best cancel because of his seasickness. Maybe we will have the good fortune to make it this way again.” Something about her voice told me that she was faking it, making the best of a lost dream. It was sad.
People who don’t get seasick don’t give it a second thought; for those of us that do, it’s a terror. I have been a miserable, nauseated puddle on two unforgettable occasions — once while on a snorkel boat tour at the Great Barrier Reef, once while crossing the Lanai channel. I was a little unhappy on an evening cruise out of Kona when the swell was up, but once I’d tossed my lunch into the ocean and had a soda, I felt a lot better. The reef trip was awful, just awful, and crossing the Lanai channel that day, oh, I never want to feel like that again. I was not going to let my fear of seasickness keep me from crossing the Drake, but I was also not going to throw caution to the wind and rely on optimism. Oh, no, I went chemical.
Our departure out the Beagle Channel was glorious. There was a beautiful orange sunset, little lights along the horizon, a dining room that fairly vibrated with anticipation. And then, we entered the swell. The wind was behind us, the ship moved forward at a steady pace, the crew was relaxed and confident. But we were swinging, back and forth, back and forth, 20 degrees one way, 20 degrees the other, back and forth, back and forth. Until it was locked shut, I looked out the porthole at water then sky, water, then sky. I ate crackers and drank ginger tea, and, doped up on Scopalamine, I slept. A lot. I listened to episode after episode of Selected Shorts on my MP3 player — a life saver as I could not read, I could not watch TV, I could not write, I could not do anything that required my eyes to stay still.
In general, I was fine. I wasn’t seasick, I was sedated. All the while we went back and forth, back and forth, it was like riding the pendulum of a clock. I slid forward in my bunk, then down towards my feet. Forward, down, backwards, up. When my head was down, I could hear the water rushing past, when it was up, I felt my feet bump against the foot of the bed. I would climb out of bed now and then to wash my face and brush my teeth. I would open the door of the cabin and look into the hall and see — nothing, though once, the crew had placed bags every three feet or so along the handrails, just in case. I tried to go up above deck a few times, but the sight of the horizon — above me, below me, above me, below me — was too much to bear. I’d grab something to eat and head right back to the dimly lit little cabin.
If this sounds pathetic and miserable, well, it was, but only a little. Let me remind you, I wasn’t seasick. I was in a gauzy state, rocking back and forth, bored, dehydrated, lethargic. My roommates came and went bearing sodas, crackers, bread, and fruit. Sometimes we’d chat and I’d assure them that actually, I was fine, I just couldn’t seem to function when the line where the water met the sky refused to stay still. About 24 hours went by. I went above deck in hopes of attending a lecture. And then, only then, things went a nasty green. I broke out in a cold sweat. I limped weakly back to the cabin and when my roommates returned, they found me wedged in a corner nursing my foot where the desk chair had fallen on it when the ship leaned hard to port. I must have been an awful color, one of my roomies fetched the doctor. He appeared and gave me a dose of something; about 45 minutes later I was dead asleep.
Holy cats! I’m in Antarctica!
The next morning, the water was calm, with a slightly rippled surface from the wind. I was starving. And we were in Antarctica. At breakfast, I sat next to a pale French woman who pushed food around on her plate while her solicitous husband coaxed her to eat something, try some toast. I had not been alone.”How was your crossing?” I asked him. “For some of us,” he nodded gently towards his wife, “it was not so good.”
While the three hours or so that I spent fighting nausea, feeling sticky and weak, were unpleasant, on the whole, I’d say I got off easy. I had two more days during the trip that weren’t great. One day we had that swell again and I missed an excursion. Queasy and unsettled, I took half a dose of Dramamine and took a nap. And on our return trip, the seas were up, the ship went every which way. I dozed through most of the first day, but on the second day, I awoke hungry and weirdly untroubled by the motion. I’d eaten dinner in my cabin the night before, but at breakfast I sat and watched the sky, wherever it happened to be, above me, to the right, to the left, below me, and I went up for tea in the observation lounge. I was more comfortable below deck, to be sure, but I wasn’t in self-imposed exile anymore. I wandered the empty hallways between meal times, sometimes seeing a housekeeper or a seaworthy passenger. I slept a lot, again, and listened to many more hours of short stories. It was dull, I was listless. But I was fine.
I am not sold on the boating life. I feel no need to rush off and book a cruise or to rearrange my life in ways that will accommodate more time in boats. Preventing seasickness is an unglamorous and boring way to spend time, floating a little bit dizzy, off balance in water world, an invalid unable to participate, let alone enjoy the journey. I have heard tell that you get used to it, that you acquire your sea legs. I have also heard that different individuals get seasick in different conditions – this would explain why that persistent swell was so hard for me while the every which way rough seas were more manageable. I can’t confirm or deny any of this. What I can say is this: I get seasick. And I did not stay home.
On our last day at sea, something amazing happened. The seas flattened out, the sky cleared, the sun appeared. Dolphins skipped on the horizon. The girls from New Zealand put on shorts and walked laps around the ship. Passengers wandered up and down the stairs to the bridge deck carrying cups of coffee, books, cameras. We were surrounded by the flat blue waters of the Drake, there was nothing but ocean on the horizon, ocean with a slight downward curve at the lower outside edges of the sky.
My trip was sponsored by TravelWild. And the first interview they arranged for me as part of my writing contract was with a ship’s doctor to discuss seasickness.
Of all of the things that I have thought about to dissuade me from going to Antarctica, I confess seasickness never made the list. It’s right there at the top now. (New reader, first comment – I’m digging through the archives, so forgive me if I toss in the random comment as I read).