Re: [Paddlewise] Seasickness (was: More Thoughts on Towing)

Matt Broze wrote:

> [snip] Once I was afraid I was going to
> have to tow a seasick paddler (while I was a little queasy myself) into 25
> knot winds and 6+ foot seas with breaking crests during one moonless
> night(hard to see the horizon). I would try to find the horizon from the
> crest of each wave and that was enough that I stabilized at a slightly
> nauseous state and didn't get worse. [snip] We did discover
> that if you are feeling seasick whatever you do don't stop and raft up as
> you will get a lot less sick if you can keep paddling. This took about 10
> seconds to figure out when we stopped and rafted up because one paddler said
> she was too sick to paddle and needed to stop. With that as the alternative
> she made several miles paddling into these seas and reached our destination
> under her own power. I am very subject to motion sickness but this is the
> only time it has happened while kayaking and I blame the lack of an easy to
> see horizon.

I'm curious about the experience of others re:  seasickness.  I'd like others
to post their anecdotes.  Here are mine.

Unlike Matt, I am relatively immune to motion sickness, and have only been
close to seasickness once.  My event was on a day when there was a thin layer
of fog (probably only a couple hundred feet thick) glued to the sea surface,
and *almost no swell.*  the thinness of the fog layer allowed enough sun to
penetrate the fog that enormous amounts of light were returned from scattering
off the fog.  It was almost like the uniform illumination from a fluorescent
light, if you were inside the light!

I blame the total lack of a horizon for my queasiness that day.

For comparison, my EX sometimes paddles with my crowd, and she gets queasy
whenever there is any true swell (not just wind waves) -- the stuff of period
longer than about 6-8 seconds.  To avoid getting sick, she uses scope
patches.  She is very susceptible to motion sickness (more so than Matt,
sounds like), and will get queasy when a low swell is running *even if there
is a definite horizon.*

-- 
Dave Kruger
Astoria, OR
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