Seasick on first liveaboard?

[Carlos Diver]

Before your trip, you should take whatever medication you plan on bringing to see how it reacts in your system. Bonine works great for me without side effects, but Dramamine knocks me out cold. It wont help if you take a med for seasickness then sleep most of the day anyway.

 

[Shasta_man]

If you are going to Palau or Komodo, then choose Palau because it is much more likely to have calm weather. For our trip, the boat anchored in German Channel for the whole time except the trip to Peleliu. Trips in Komodo can easily be ok because they tend to go along through the islands but some transits have the possibility of being rough. Woke up one night and went up to find 5 gallon water bottles off the water dispensers rolling around on the floor pouring water everywhere after falling out of the dispensers. Have video that would make you request your Komodo boat deposit back after you saw it. Anchoring in the lee of the islands is usually fine but stopping out in open water can result in the rolling motion that makes you sick, but that is usually a short time. My experience is that you can avoid seasickness by keeping focused on what you are doing and not thinking about whether you are going to get sick. That doesn't rule it out entirely but makes it better. I take a Bonine every morning regardless of how I feel and I start the day before the trip starts. I also practice the "look at some stationary object in the boat, not outside" method to avoiding watching the up and down motion. I almost got seasick on a dinner cruise in San Francisco Bay because they positioned everyone looking out the side windows so you could see the up and down.

 

[Darnold9999]

My experience is that you can avoid seasickness by keeping focused on what you are doing and not thinking about whether you are going to get sick. That doesn't rule it out entirely but makes it better. I take a Bonine every morning regardless of how I feel and I start the day before the trip starts. I also practice the "look at some stationary object in the boat, not outside" method to avoiding watching the up and down motion. I almost got seasick on a dinner cruise in San Francisco Bay because they positioned everyone looking out the side windows so you could see the up and down.

... and that would be an absolute guarantee that I would be sick. Focusing inside and or no windows is a recipe for disaster(for me) Everyone has different triggers.

 

[ScubaSarah1981]

I get sea sick pretty easily - I got nauseous in the water during my open water checkout dive while doing surface skills, and got sick on the boat in the middle of swapping tanks. I had taken Non-drowsy Dramamine, but not until 1 hour before boarding. I found that I have to take it the night before I get on a boat and the next morning as well.

I did my first live-aboard last year to Belize. The crossing over the first night was rough and I expected a tough night being below deck, but I surprisingly had no symptoms at all. I planned to take meds the entire trip, but ended up cutting my dose in half and may not have even needed that (although I wasn't willing to risk it entirely).

Good luck - hope you love the live-aboard!

 

[Shasta_man]

<,Everyone has different triggers.>> Thanks Darnold, I guess this is why seasickness has never been cured. I will clarify my "not looking out the window" comment to I don't look where the up and down motion is obvious because that is where my problem was on the dinner cruise. Standing and looking out at the horizon is good if I'm not watching through a window that is obviously moving up and down. That's also the reason I look at something inside the boat, but that doesn't help if I can see up/down movement. I think the looking at an object combines the "look at something that isn't moving" and "keep your mind on other things" for me. Of course my interpretation of the variables involved might be wrong and something else could be causing/preventing the resulting behavior. Perhaps my brain is ignoring my eye input anyway and it's really how my brain deals with motion.

 

[Kevrumbo]

--Here's an easy beginning exercise to help develop your Cognitive/Kinesthetic Awareness and to understand the basic mechanics of it all:

Stand-up, close your eyes, and have a friend push you at random intervals from any direction around you. Try to steady yourself and resist being knocked over as best you can. After a while, you might start feeling disoriented or even dizzy & nauseous (the start of motion sickness).

Take a break . . .and then try again:

Stand-up, close your eyes, and this time have your friend push once from directly in front of you, and then 5 seconds later push you coming from your right side. Repeat this set over and over --Anticipate, brace yourself and counter-react to these pushes to keep from being knocked over. You shouldn't be as disoriented as you were before because you're now in control, countering these predictable, periodic and expected forces trying to knock you over.

Now apply this to being on the diveboat: you see the swells coming in a regular predictable frequency (every 12 seconds for example) --Anticipate, brace yourself and counter-react to these "pushes" to keep from being knocked over. Now close your eyes and do the same thing. At the very least, with practice (and hopefully easy rhythm swells, and non-heavy, stormy or chaotic seas to start off with!), you should be able hold off the nausea to a tolerable level.

Be patient and don't give up: it takes time, concentration & effort to develop and apply this cognitive/kinesthetic technique to the seemingly complex 3-dimensional forces acting on you at sea and achieve some relief of motion sickness symptoms . . .the gist is to figure out and feel the rhythm of the swells and anticipate yours & the boat's resultant movement. . .

Here's another tactile/kinesthetic and imagery feedback exercise: have a friend drive you to the shopping mall, grocery store, bank, school etc -or even to work. In other words, going to places that you've been to many & many times before, that you know the routes to by heart and which are "google mapped" in your mind's eye.

Close your eyes, and have your driver friend call out the physical location (i.g "corner of Grand & Main Street"), and describe what dynamic action he's executing at that instant ("stopping and now right turn onto Main Street, going under the Interstate Highway overpass. . .). "See" that location and movement in your imagination -a virtual satellite and ground level mental image playback- along with feeling the dynamic forces acting on your body -and simultaneously anticipate bracing yourself for the stop sign & right turn onto Main St, and knowing you'll be accelerating forward with a slight downward vector/inertial sensation as you descend under the Interstate overpass. (When you get good at it, you essentially become your driver friend's "human GPS Navigator App", telling him exactly where you both are -all with your eyes closed)

Again it's all kinesthetic pattern recognition of physical dynamic forces acting on your body, and synchronizing it all with a memorized image of location and movement related to those forces.