How to not get sea sick on your cruise

Motion sickness, sea sickness, upset stomach, queasy, nausea, these are all words nearly guaranteed to destroy your vacation.  When you’re going on a cruise, there are several things that you can do to avoid seasickness, or at least cure it quickly.

Until you actually get on a boat, it can be hard to tell if you’ll get seasick.  And even having been on one boat won’t guarantee that you won’t be seasick on another under different circumstances.  The best thing to do is to take precautionary measures in advance as it’s better to not get sick in the first place than to discover that you do get sick and then have to fix it.

Modern cruise ships are designed in every way currently possible to be as stable as possible and neutralize those up and down feelings.  Unless you’re on a very small boat or you hit some very rough weather, you may never even notice the movement.  So the first step to avoiding seasickness is to pick your boat and destination with care.

How big is your ship?  Any modern ships should have stabilizers build in to eliminate a lot of the motion from the sea.  Huge ships are sometimes nearly like floating islands and the sheer size and weight alone can be a big help towards eliminating that feeling.  If you think seasickness could be an issue, be sure to book a cruise on one of the larger ships.  Additionally, the center of the ship should feel the least motion so you could request a cabin near the center of the ship to help offset or avoid seasickness.  The one exception to this being that if you expect that you will probably experience seasickness, an outside cabin can help much like riding next to a window in a car.

Also, where is your ship going?  Luckily, you have to things that will help you pick out your cruise for avoiding seasickness.  First, the cruises run all the time and so they know which areas are calmer than others.  If you’re working with a travel agent or someone at a cruise line, be sure to find out which of the cruises are in calmer waters.  Second, we have weather predictions like never before.  If you’re taking a cruise in hurricane season, find out where the worst areas are and don’t go there.  Take full advantage of our modern scientific advances and plan ahead to avoid the weather.

If all your preparations do you no good and you do experience some seasickness on your cruise, hopefully you came prepared.  First of all, often seasickness goes away on its own as you become accustomed to the motion.  However, if that takes two days on a three day cruise it’s not a lot of help.  Take some Sea-bands along and slip them on before you even get on the boat.  They’re elastic wristbands that work on the principle of acupressure.  They are shown to help prevent or alleviate nausea in a variety of settings (motion sickness, pregnancy, airplanes) and could help significantly.  They can typically be found in most pharmacies or travel/luggage stores.  Often the ship carries them too, but they will probably cost a lot more and will sell out quickly if things get rough.

Last of all, various medications and natural remedies are available to help prevent or fix seasickness.  Ginger has been a cure for an upset stomach for hundreds of years.  Dry crackers and toast and doesn’t sound very appetizing, but they can really help an upset stomach.  Apples have also been known to help.  Lying down and fresh air are two items that help nausea, and if nothing works, talk to your doctor about some Dramamine or another motion-sickness medication so that your cruise isn’t ruined by seasickness.