Date: 27.01.2022
Author: Charlotte
Position: Coast of Panama
Geographical Position: 07°51,2’ N 079°21,6`W
Etmal: 8428

On this ship I’m known for two things: I get seasick very easily and often but still continue to go to watch. Oh and being a troublemaker (thank you for that Marci). Today I really lived up to my name and so I got seasick on a flat calm sea, but I also noticed how much knowledge I have gained regarding this topic in the last three months. In fact, I can even tell friends who are seasick the best type of seasickness medication for their needs and have a lot of good tips and tricks for them.
And here they are:

CAUSE OF THE VOMITTING:
The Seasickness mechanism is activated when the brain motion analyser gets a signal from either the eyes or the joints and muscles or the ear and balance organ. The answer from the brain motion analyser is vomiting. The response from the nose upon the detection of unpleasant smells is directly connected to the Vomit centre as well and will make the symptoms much worse.

PREVENTION AND TREATMENT:
Luckily there are a number of things that will help more or less. First of all, there are tablets. Most of them you swallow and they start to work after a minimum of half an hour and a maximum of two hours, but they do have a disadvantage. If you have to throw up in that time, they won`t work. There are different types of pills however, which you leave under your tongue where they dissolve, feel free to throw up as much as you like, they will still stay in your body. One of the other options are patches. Little round plasters that you put behind your ear and from there they will release substances that will make you feel better. However, the patches are very rare and the medic only gives them out the people that really struggle with sea sickness a lot. All of those medications will make you feel a bit tired, but not more than the seasickness would cause anyway.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCES:
After some time, you will just get to know the feeling. I personally know it so well, that I can already tell when I will have to throw up next. I can even predict the exact number of minutes and sometimes we play a game to see who can guess it better, myself, the medic or my friends. Not thinking about it and laughing a bit helps a lot as well. Another nice effect of seasickness is that you will really get to know the medic and the ship itself because you will have to pick your favourite throw-up-spot. For me it`s the portside scuppers next to the recyclables. I really like the ambient there. You can hold on to a pin and sit on the crate with the glass waste and sometimes, when you are super lucky there will be a wave in the perfect moment that will clean up after you.

DIFFERENT STRAGETIES
Of course, everyone handles it differently, like Knut who ate a whole packet of dried ginger cubes and still swears that it helps. Everyone else who tried that method just simply hates ginger now. But for him it is a success story, and, in the end, everyone has to find out what helps for themselves. I could still think of a lot of untried methods like carrying a bucket everywhere, even aloft or eating a lot of oranges because Vitamin C helps apparently. Finally, the last remaining method of just going to bed is one of the most tried and approved ones.