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This is my approach to “Mal de mere”, “sea sickness”, “motion sickness” or whatever you want to call it. It is a terrible affliction and can spoil what may well have been a great fun day.

The reason for sea sickness seems to be two fold.

The first factor is that our balance centre, which is in the middle ear and works somewhat like a gyroscope, becomes overwhelmed by conflicting messages from our eyes and movements of our head created by the abnormal movements of both our head and the surroundings. I think it's this conflict that causes our imbalance and makes us sleepy.

At the same time at the other end of our body our stomach also reacts to movements that it is not used to. My understanding is that the body compensates for this discomfort in the stomach, which is exacerbated by the imbalance in our balance centre, by triggering the production of excessive saliva which when swallowed trigger the production of excessive gastric juices and it's the excessive gastric juices that ultimately causes us to throw up.

So here is how I mitigate motion sickness.

Planning ahead. If I am going on a boating trip (applies to cars and planes as well) where there is any potential that I will get motion sickness I start preparing two days before if possible:

1. I watch my diet and avoid spicy, rich, greasy or sweet food.
2. I cut my alcohol consumption either out or down.
3. I get a full quota of sleep. For me that is 8 hours a night and includes the time that I spend sleeping in front of the TV (an average of 1.5 hours each evening so my wife tells me).

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Then the day before the trip, whether or not, I started preparing a day early:

1. I am very careful about what I eat and stay well clear of spicy, rich, greasy and sweet food (so no curries, no deep fried chicken and chips, no chocolate or ice cream etc).
2. I have a completely grog free day.
3. If I am heading off early I go to bed early and make sure I get as much sleep as possible. Half my normal quota of sleep is my minimum target (for me that is 4 hours … so for a 1:00am alarm it's into bed by 9:00pm).
4. I take 1 Travelcalm tablet with 200 ml of water 8 hours before I am getting up in the morning.
5. When I get up take a full Travelcalm tablet with 200 ml of water. At that stage I also set my alarm for 6 hours forward to remind me to take my next Travelcalm tablet.
6. As an aside, I note that, before I get dressed I also apply my sun screen. It's surprising how easy it is to head off fishing in the dark and then to forget to apply sun screen when the sun finally comes up.
7. Before heading off I have my normal wake up drink which is white tea.
8. I also have a light breakfast. Toast with a minimum amount of margarine and a scraping of Vegemite is my preferred option.

During the trip:

1. If I am aware that I am producing a lot of saliva in my mouth I spit it out rather than swallowing it. Your fishing partner will prefer you do that rather than throw up over the side of the boat. The saliva is part of the ‘out of balance response’ of the body and causes the stomach to release gastric juices.
2. I eat only Salada, Sao, ginger biscuits or other dry biscuits and make sure I have one biscuits at least every hour for the duration of the trip … this helps dry up the gastric juices.
3. I only drink water or ginger beer for the duration of the trip.
4. I take additional Travelcalm tablets with me and take a tablet 6 hours after the wake up tablet whether I think I need them or not. If I was still fishing 6 hours later (which is unlikely) I would take a further tablet. With the tablet the night before that would be atotal of 4 tablets for the trip and the maximum dosage of 4 tablets in one 24 hour period.
5. I also avoid, as much as possible wearing my multi-focal glasses, which I normally wear most of the time these days, for the duration of the trip. The trap for me in the past, I think, has been wearing those everyday clear multi-focal glasses when heading out in the dark, and also when travelling out to the fishing destination in the dark, and then fishing whilst wearing them till the sun is bothering me. By definition multi-focal glasses require more eye movement to adjust to different distances of vision and I think that mucks up my balance centre. As an alternative I have single vision (long vision) clear glasses and single vision (long vision) polaroid glasses and I wear the clear ones whilst it's dark and swap over to my polaroids when the sun comes up.
6. I avoid looking down too much. Anything I would normally look down to do I try to lift up in front of my eyes with the horizon in the background. This includes tying a fly on, putting bait on, tying hooks on etc.
7. I have also added a two rod length of heavier braid between my braided line and my mono leader so that I can feel, as I am winding in, the knot where the different weights and colours of braid are joined. At that stage the hook is around 3 meters below the water line. As a result of that I don't look down so much as I wind my line in.

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