Going to Sea

I always hated going to sea.

The anticipation of hours and potentially days of vomiting made my anxiety reach peak level. The hours leading up to us leaving, my mother would prepare food for the first days offshore and the smells of cooking chicken or bread that, on a normal day, would make my mouth water in anticipation of eating a delicious meal, now made my mouth involuntarily water leaving a tinny taste that made me want to throw up just to get it out of my mouth.

 I had become an expert in throwing up to the point that I thought I could give any bulimic supermodel a run for their money. Soup was good: easy in, easy out. Apples were bad because they would get stuck in my throat as would linguini and sometimes, I would have to pull it out of both my mouth and nose. Cheese was an absolute no-go. In the regurgitation process it became stringy and tasted horrible coming out.

I spent a lot of time with my head looking downward at the water, as Star crashed through the waves. The deep blue of the water was beautiful, but offered little comfort to me when I felt as if I was dying.

Sometimes the canvas on the spray rails on the side of the boat would become caked with vomit and my father would have to use several buckets of water to wash it off, most of the times with a smile on his face or some remark about the inaccuracy of my projectile vomiting.

 My father never got sick. “Oh it’s just in your head,” he would say. My mom knew my pain. She was a little more sympathetic, but she wasn’t afflicted to the degree that I was. Maybe she was just stronger than I was, or still is.

 Luckily, I slowly would become used to the rise and fall of Star in the waves after day two or three. I could then start to enjoy the beauty of being out there.

 Nights were my favorite time. The seas would generally become calmer and my seasickness subsided. I felt the most connected to the world out there, hundreds, if not thousands of miles from land. It was all because of the stars. They made me feel that I always had company.

It also helped that there was always someone “on watch.” When I was small, my parents would do two hours on watch, two hours resting. It provided a routine and a predictability to life that wasn’t always there when we weren’t offshore.

I would join my mother during her early morning watch at around 2 or 3am, and she would point out the Southern Cross, Orion’s Belt and all the other constellations that she knew. The Southern Cross was always my favorite. The constellation was always easy to spot and seeing those stars made me feel closer to home.

 Once we arrived at our destination, the memory of my initial days of seasickness faded. After making landfall, I would often miss the rhythm of offshore life. Everyone had a role an knew their place out there. The chaos of the real world brought with it a sensory overload that was sometimes hard to deal with after days offshore.

However, it didn’t take long to become used to being safe and still in a cozy anchorage, or better yet, being a land dweller for weeks or months. When the time came to sail again, the anxiety came back, as well as that taste in my mouth, and the cycle repeated itself.

And off we went again…