By Ian Galletti
Seasickness ceased to be a problem for me, as a skipper, during the late 1960s. I was driving down to the Hamble to skipper one of the Royal Air Force’s offshore racing yachts, tuned into BBC Radio 4, when I heard of an experiment carried out by NASA and the USN at San Diego, to find a remedy for motion sickness.
It was reported that NASA/USN had devised a machine which could make people sick very quickly. It consisted of a seat that rotated whilst simultaneously going up and down. Victims were strapped into this and made to rest their heads on their shoulder and with no medication at all they would last, on average, about 20 seconds before being violently sick.
They were then instructed to dose themselves with their own favourite anti sickness remedy. This delayed the onset of the sickness to an average of about 2 minutes. However, when given a capsule containing 5 mg (a teaspoonful) of colloidal stem ginger they were able to last out for 6 minutes.
Yachting Monthly had recently reported that Stugeron®(cinnarizine) appeared to work for 9 out of 10 people and had very few, if any, side effects and this is what I had been recommending to crews that sailed with me but now I have added ginger to my advice. Ginger in the form of crystallised stem ginger, from any good confectioner, which mostly came in teaspoonful sizes. Later, I also carried ginger tablets, available from health food shops and most chandlers, which could be swallowed with water, for those that don’t like the taste of ginger.
Ian Galletti took early retirement to go sailing on his own yacht before she got osmosis. To keep sailing, while waiting for the cure he then spent seven years as a delivery skipper of boats such as Madrigal II, seen here in the Gulf Stream. He is now writing his memoirs.
So my instructions to crew was to take 2 Stugeron® the night before departure (if they suffered the side effect of sleepiness then they had the added benefit of a good night’s rest) or at least 8 hours before departure, not the 2 hours advised in the instructions, and then one every 8 hours thereafter and if that failed to work, to take the ginger immediately any signs seasickness were felt. Since first giving these instructions nearly 60 years ago I have not been troubled by either seasick or sleepy crews.
Some crew have ignored the first part of the instruction and have relied simply on ginger alone and they have been fine. Moreover, ginger even seems to work after the onset of seasickness, unlike other oral remedies.
Incidentally, I have found that crystallised stem ginger is effective for all kinds of nausea whether it be morning sickness (not me!) or as a result of over indulgence…
Another cure for seasickness (main photo) was proposed by the inventor Sir Henry Bessemer who developed a 70ft by 30ft gimballed saloon for the cross Channel ferry SS Bessemer in 1875. After a few disastrous voyages the ship was mothballed before being sold for scrap in 1879. The ship’s designer kept the saloon which was used as a billiard room. In WW2 it was destroyed in a direct hit by the Luftwaffe.