Seasickness related to boat size or something else…?

[hpeer]

My Wife tolerates scope very well.

However what she finds just as effective are the type of wrist band that gives mild electrical stimulation. Not the passive type, the ones that need batteries.

Me? I just eat another big sandwich!

[JPA Cate]

If you could go sailing most weekends pzas, you would probably mostly get over it, your body somehow learns that this change is something it must cope with. One thing that helps me is limiting stuff moving belowdecks. So, I have a bungee to tame my trawler lantern's swing. And, if only day sailing, well it's okay to feel queasy "now", because the wind direction and hence motion will soon change, and the quease will depart.

However, if you want a 50 footer, go for it. It may have been conditions with the Bavaria, or you may just feel attracted elsewhere. No way to tell after the fact. However, a comment. Some people like dark and cavey, it feels cosy to them; maybe you like open and light because you don't feel cramped. Beware of large open spaces with no hand holds for an ocean going boat, and do look for U shaped galleys and secure sea berths.

Ann

[sailingpzas]

Originally Posted by Ann T. Cate

Some people like dark and cavey, it feels cosy to them; maybe you like open and light because you don't feel cramped. Beware of large open spaces with no hand holds for an ocean going boat, and do look for U shaped galleys and secure sea berths.

Ann

Yes, in deed. (As said before, was not meant in as offence.)
In fact, the more modern and light models look more appealing to me. Though on the other hand, a more classic Oyster has also a lot of charme, just in it's own way. Nobody can deny that!

And regarding the open space danger issue for heavy seas: That is in fact something we (me and my girlfriend) agreed on very quickly when we had the First 50. The salon looks nice, but even when just heeled (no bad seas), it is in fact pretty hard to get from one side to another. It seems they simply forgot to put in some handles, or they never thought about the fact that a mono does heel. Anyhow, we are aware of that...and in fact in this respect the First 50 appears not well thought through.

We saw in January on the "Boot 2017" the new Jeanneaus (51/54) and they are much better in this regard (and also real beauties). This was something me and my girlfriend did agree on right away. (Apart from that the U-shaped galley is not only nicer looking in our opinion, but also more practical when heeling/rolling.) - Well, anyway. Unless we find a pott of gold somewhere, a brand new Jeanneau is currently out of the question. Unfortuantely. But since the Jeanneau 51 remains nevertheless one of our "most like ones", we will be looking into some of the older models of course when we are getting close to actually purchasing our own cruiser.

[Alan Mighty]

Originally Posted by Ann T. Cate

Suijin brings up the very interesting issue that different types of motion affect bodies differently. Mine objects to jerky motion (which is why I don't think a cat would work for me), but others' object to the uuuuuP and doooooown of a flat sea swell, or the rolling common with sailing DDW.

1. It's not the boat, not the seas, it's the person.

Originally Posted by Ann T. Cate

If tempted to try the patches, be sure to trial them ashore, some people hallucinate from the scopalamine.

2. Recent research suggests that use of scopalamine may prolong/delay acclimation to motion at sea.


3. I think there is no need to apologise for a new thread on seasickness. New research papers are published each year; many previous beliefs about motion sickness have been debunked.


The editors of Latitude 38 do a roundup of latest research about once a year, using the time-honoured Max Webb/Lee Helm straight man/clever woman format. See the 2016 roundup: (attached) from Latitude 38 Nov 2016 "Walk this Way".

[snort]

I'd say it's the seas.
I've only been seasick once, and it was on the Mediterranean on a huge ferry. I never knew one's skin could actually look green.
I love this saying about seasickness: "At first you're afraid you're going to die. Then, you're afraid you're not." It's so true.

[rbk]

I'm with the general consensus here that more time aboard is warranted. Chances are you'll eventually run into weather and even the largest vessel will start to make her crew green. I have from time to time experienced it and have found for me there are a lot of variables. For instance, a late night too much to drink early morning with no food then cleaning and filleting fish with my head down by my knees for close to an hour does not agree with my stomach and some food helps. Being confined below in the dark hungry with food cooking has set me off. Overall anything can affect you and only you can figure it out with time. For me if and whenever things get too much I find chumming the waters makes every right again. My wife will fight it to the bitter end or go to sleep and that's how we each deal with it. Personally I find land sickness worse, more so the strange looks of people thinking you're drunk.

[markpierce]

Always got seasick outside SF's Golden Gate bridge the several times we sailed a 29-foot sailboat. Never happened on many voyages on a 900-foot ship despite waves of up to fifty feet high.

[fgd3]

Originally Posted by sailingpzas

I do in fact fancy a cat also for other reasons, but since my meermaid keeps saying "a cat is no real sailing", it appears unlikely to convince her to get a cat.

Take her sailing on one on a windy day.

Fabbian

[wsmac]

Here's my input on the matter...
.
I believe it's a combination of the individual(more physical than mental)... the container you are in/on... air quality... temperature... and the motion created by outside forces.
.
I've experienced motion sickness within the water, on top of the water, on land, and in the air.
It's happened while aboard a mix of small watercraft to large ships and small aircraft to large aircraft.
.
Under the water was when I was going to commercial dive school, cleaning boat hulls for extra money. This was probably more of an issue due to accidentally ingesting harbor water though!
.
On top of the water, bobbing around close to shore in my first attempt to snorkel in open water(Monterey, California), and on boats, in different places on several different types of craft.
A few years ago I was with my girlfriend down in Belize on Caye Caulker. We hired a boat to go zipping around to some of the popular snorkeling places. Not only did I fare well on the small boat, but I had no problems snorkeling that whole day... maybe the fresh-cut pineapple onboard helped?
.
Out in the Gulf of Mexico, my first experience was on a workboat my dive company had us working from. In the wee dark hours of the morning, after loading up all the gear, compressors, and whatnot... I discovered fine fried food and beautiful red punch in the galley for breakfast! I ate up a good stomach full... then once underway and out in the open water, I soon painted the topsides red... and chunky.
I spent the rest of the day at the stern manning the diver's umbilical, with my foul-weather gear on because the guys up on top the the drilling rig we were tied up to kept pushing off greasy grime down upon our heads. The motion of the boat, being super hot under my rubberized gear, and having already upchucked breakfast a few hours before probably added up... you think? LOL
.
Luckily... I was tending another diver with several men on the crew so I could take breaks, go below decks into a nice, dark, cool berth.
.
By contrast, I got to work on the company boat on a 2 week job once. This was a large ship (can't remember the size) and I never had an issue with motion sickness. We had walk-in fridges and women cooks onboard... so I still ate bunches, but could keep it all down.
.
.
Up in Alaska, I would get sick on Halibut Charter boats out of Valdez but not on river rafts or kayaks.
.
Here in California, I have gone outside Humboldt Bay in a friend's small motor boat to fish for salmon and never had an issue.
.
.
Up in the air... never got sick on commercial airliners.
Got sick a couple times in Army aircraft (C-123, C-130, but not C-140's) when I was in the 82nd. As a medic, I sure wish I could have charged for the amount of those, "Hey Doc! Got any of those little pink pills?" I handed out to less fortunate paratroopers!
Gotta say though... in this case, a C-123 or C-130 was a very uncomfortable plane to be in the belly of! Especially when it was HOT! So that exasperates motion sickness in my opinion.
.
While taking flying lessons out of Eielson Air Force Base or flying in Bush Aircraft in Alaska, I never had an issue in a Cub or Cessna!
Even flying in a friend's Cessna down here in Cali... never an issue.
.
.
What I'm getting at is... in my personal experience, it's really dependent on your physical makeup.
This includes eating and drinking... too much of the right/wrong stuff or not enough.
Other factors that can trigger someone's motion sickness issues, be them light or rather heavy, are the size and makeup of the container you are in or on, temperature and air quality, and the motion your body is subjected to.
I certainly believe some individuals will acclimate to such triggers and over time feel less responsive to them... but then I've known people who just can't seem to ever get over it!
.
Did I mention Amusement Park rides?
.
I could believe that you, personally, might have an issue with a particular size of boat along with it's hull shape. You also mention other factors... close-in cabin vs more wide cabin, etc. Hopefully you can figure out what works best for you either for long-term or short-term sailing. You already seem to have the desire and ability to track factors and a willingness to figure it out... rather than just giving up, that is.
I see a lot of good comments before mine... hope mine are helpful somehow.

[Island Time O25]

10 days ago I completed a 2 week transit from Key West to Colon, Panama on a 47 foot former racer converted to a liveaboard cruiser (think motion comfort ratio of only about 20 as the boat displaces only about 20,000lbs although 8+ft keel somewhat offsets this). Now that was interesting - going with the NE/E trade winds against E/NE flowing Gulfstream, plus the tides and the swell, etc. All 4 on board were less then comfortable but no one got really seasick or "fed the fish". What I found most unpleasant when asleep (or rather when trying to sleep) was the sudden down movement as the boat came off the wave, as in the feeling you get when on the airplane it gets to "fall" for a sec or two. Any other motion you can brace yourself against but that one. Not surprisingly my 36 footer which displaces 18,000lbs and 20,000+lbs when loaded has a smoother motion and handles the confused seas better than that 47ft racer. In the past we were rafted up a few times and I had the chance to compare motions during wakes produced by powerboats nearby. Mine was much stabler and barely moved while my friend's 10+ft larger boat was hobbyhorsing pronouncedly. Go figure.

[Tkeeth]

As stated before, lenght of boat isnt the factor. There is a thread already where the comfort factor of different models is shown through mathematical equations. The length of the boat, length of waves and intervals are the variables. I and about 200 others got deathly seasick on a 785 ft. Ship around the horn in 50 ft. Seas that were following us. Was a miserable 3 days.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by sailingpzas

Well, in fact this came already into mind as well.

Though, this might raise the question, whether a larger boat is perhaps still more comfortable in larger seas.

Yes, of course a larger boat is more comfortable. Not just sheer size but also the mass of the boat. Old fashioned heavy boats are more comfortable than light fast ones.

There are also big differences between monos and cats. Cat, being unballasted, has a faster, more "twitchy": motion than a mono, especially if you are really comparing like-for-like (i.e. 40 foot cat with 50 foot mono). This twitchy motion makes some people seasick very quickly. On the other hand, the heeling of a mono makes other people sick as hell -- because it can contribute to the spatial disorientation which is the root cause of seasickness. Only time my Father was ever seasick was racing a catamaran to Cuba in the '90's -- he said he thought he was going to die. But he was coming from decades of acclimatization to monos.



I would not however expect the difference between 40 foot and 50 foot monos of similar type to be extremely dramatic. What you experienced is probably more a matter of different sea conditions. You can certainly get seasick on a 50, indeed on a 60 or even a 90 foot boat. Just somewhat less.

Seasickness is a bane to those who suffer from it. Most sailors who suffer from it are able to overcome it over time and with experience -- as the body starts to "understand" the motion of the boat.

[sailingpzas]

Originally Posted by wsmac

...
I could believe that you, personally, might have an issue with a particular size of boat along with it's hull shape. You also mention other factors... close-in cabin vs more wide cabin, etc. Hopefully you can figure out what works best for you either for long-term or short-term sailing. You already seem to have the desire and ability to track factors and a willingness to figure it out... rather than just giving up, that is.
I see a lot of good comments before mine... hope mine are helpful somehow.

Thanks a lot. Yes, giving up is not an option. At least not yet!
I will definitely try to narrow down my personal reasons for it, but from what I read so far from all the comments is, that "outside conditions" (boat, weather, food, etc) are one aspect, but the bigger chunk is apparently still the "internal factor" (mental state, conditioning, time getting used to, etc). And of course, many people try to to find "the one reason", but that is most likely determined to fail, since there is not one single reason. It's apparently always a combination of several things. However, if I can trick my mind into being confident that things go well by just being on a bigger boat, then perhaps that is one way of making my future trips worthwhile. But, as has been said already, it would probably silly to decide to buy a specific boat, just for this one reason.

Again, thanks for all the input. While it does not give the answer I was hoping for, it does in fact still help me to better understand what to look for.

[sailingpzas]

Originally Posted by Island Time O25

10 days ago...
...
Go figure.

This feeds my assumption somehow that it is not the LOA, but rather the weight and/or type of keel (also draught). Which somewhat makes sense wrt to the way the boat moves. More weight and lower center of gravity would probably make a boat more stable than a lightweight racer.

But, from what I got so far, that is again just one of the external factors. The real thing is in the end a combination of the internal and external factors, and those are hard to pin-point. So, I will probably just give another 40footer a shot. Since I didn't really love the Bavaria this is probably also adding a "psychological" thing here. We will see. Giving up is not an option, and time will tell if I can find some specific triggers to avoid.

[sailingpzas]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Yes, of course a larger boat is more comfortable. Not just sheer size but also the mass of the boat. Old fashioned heavy boats are more comfortable than light fast ones.

There are also big differences between monos and cats. Cat, being unballasted, has a faster, more "twitchy": motion than a mono, especially if you are really comparing like-for-like (i.e. 40 foot cat with 50 foot mono). This twitchy motion makes some people seasick very quickly. On the other hand, the heeling of a mono makes other people sick as hell -- because it can contribute to the spatial disorientation which is the root cause of seasickness. Only time my Father was ever seasick was racing a catamaran to Cuba in the '90's -- he said he thought he was going to die. But he was coming from decades of acclimatization to monos.


I would not however expect the difference between 40 foot and 50 foot monos of similar type to be extremely dramatic. What you experienced is probably more a matter of different sea conditions. You can certainly get seasick on a 50, indeed on a 60 or even a 90 foot boat. Just somewhat less.

Seasickness is a bane to those who suffer from it. Most sailors who suffer from it are able to overcome it over time and with experience -- as the body starts to "understand" the motion of the boat.

Yepp, thanks. As mentioned already, the weight and center of gravity will obviously link to the way the boat moves. Though I can tell that for me the heeling itself, never cause trouble, its more the nick and roll. (A constant heel is just as fine as no heel.)

Also, the cat vs mono thread was also interesting to read. It really seems to proof that its more the person, than the vessel. Which means, I have to keep trying to find out what works best for me.