Seasickness

Or, I Didn't Know it Could Happen to Me!

Somewhere in this blog I said once that seasickness can turn into a true medical emergency. I wish I could figure out where I said that so I could quote it now.

Last week my sailing club, BCYC, went on a three day sailing trip, Saturday through Monday. We planned to sail to Moore's Crab House on Longboat Key on Saturday, and then on Sunday go on to either Sarasota or Twin Dolphin Marina.

Meanwhile, age had started to catch up with me. I had an extremely sore knee, which my doctor's office determined to be caused by arthritis. Because I don't tolerate NSAIDS (as in, they could kill me), they put me on Prednisone. I was prescribed the standard blister pack, with a big dose the first day and then tapering off over the next five days. The Nurse Practitioner was sure my knee would be better in a few days with this.

That was Wednesday. Wednesday night and Thursday I took the big dose, and by Friday I had started tapering off. Unfortunately the blister pack fell out of my purse Friday night at the grocery store, so I missed a dose, but the pamphlet explained how to handle that, and the grocery store returned my pills to me Saturday morning, so I left on the weekend trip as a guest on someone else's boat. I was looking forward to it. She has a Catalina 27' and they can be a lot of fun to sail.

Unfortunately, the boat didn't have a chart plotter, and as three boats including my boat and her Catalina were planning on a 10-day trip in a few weeks, I convinced my friend to try my chart plotter. Another friend put in the cable at the last moment, but unfortunately soldered it to dead wires. He didn't have time to re-wire it before we left. So we had no chart plotter.

Samantha Ring, the skipper, is a good navigator, but we had gotten a late start and we wanted to get in before dark. "No worries," I said. "I have Navionics on my cell phone. I'll use that, and it will take us right to the entrance of Longboat Key Channel." It's a tricky entrance, and Samantha was glad to be able to be very precise about where it was.

So as we went out the Pass-A-Grille Channel, I huddled in the cockpit, with head down and hat shielding the sun so I could see the screen. This version of Navionics has few menus, probably to save on space, so it was a job to figure out how to do it, but after about 20 minutes I finally got a route in and it started tracking our boat.

Unfortunately, the channel had been quite rough, and I started to feel pretty sick. Next thing I knew, I was hanging my head over the leeward side calling -- several times -- for Ralph. It was fortunate, I thought, that I had eaten breakfast so early. My stomach was empty. I figured that was the end of that.

Well, it wasn't. Turns out that Prednisone has a tendency to trigger nausea. I got sicker, and sicker, and sicker. It didn't go away. Eventually I had dry heaves. I couldn't say two words without calling for Ralph in between them. Samantha was beginning to worry. We had had some mechanical problems with the boat that had delayed us. While the boat was now sailing very well, we didn't really know why the mechanical problem had happened, and we were afraid it might happen again. The fuel gauge said she was low on fuel.

I wasn't in a state of medical emergency yet, but it was close to 5PM, I was still retching, and it would be several hours before we got to shore. We both thought I might be in pretty rough shape by then.

Samantha triangulated a precise location for us and called the Coast Guard.  The Coasties initially weren't certain they needed to come, but after some debate (their flight surgeon finally said "Go get her!"), they came out and got me.

While I am extremely grateful to them, it was a terrifying ride. Their boat was moving at at least 50 mph forward (and about 80 mph up and down!) I had declined riding in the cabin because I saw nowhere I could call for Ralph without making a mess in there. I said I would ride in the back, and one of the Coasties rode with me, holding on to my life jacket. I was glad -- we were bouncing all over the place. I nearly landed on the floor a couple of times, and there was an open space in the gunnels I would have fit through! I looked inside the cabin. Those chairs had huge shock absorbers, and the three crew in the cockpit gently bobbed up and down. Meanwhile I was in the back, bouncing hard -- BANG! BANG! BANG!  I clung to what I think was a gun turret, very glad the gun wasn't there as it would have gotten in my way. I was soaked from ocean spray.

Somehow I made it in to the Cortez Bridge Coast Guard Station without soiling their boat. An ambulance was waiting to take me to a nearby hospital. I was glad to be on land!

We did not call for help too soon. While I seemed to finally be done bellowing for Ralph, I hadn't had any food since 6:30 AM, and had only had about 6 oz. of diet soda to drink since the boat had left the dook about noon. My blood chemistry was a little off, and the ER doctor invited me for an overnight stay. I really had no choice. I was in south Bradenton; I had no wearable clothes (never mind why); my car was up in Gulfport; and all my friends were 15 miles south of me. They had no cars either, but it didn't matter, because the battery on my phone was dead (Navionics uses up a lot of battery power) and I couldn't call anyone to bring me clothes and give me a ride home.

It was a good thing I stayed in the hospital. In the middle of the night they drew blood again, and I got the news Saturday morning: my blood chemistry had continued to go sour overnight, and I was now very sick. They were very glad I had opted for admission.

It was 3PM on Monday afternoon before I was released.

It turns out that Prednisone's tendency to trigger nausea is multiplied if you don't finish the blister pack. Oops.

Here's my point: even if your doctor tells you lots of information about what you're taking, even if the pharmacist buries you with details, you still don't know everything about that medication under all possible conditions. Or you might not be on any medications at all, but also not realize that you are about to come down with strep throat or a bladder infection, both of which can make you nauseous. At any time, there could be events sneaking up on you that could turn a minor bout of seasickness into a serious medical problem.

My seasickness did not become life threatening only because I got to the hospital when I did, but ... even though I was very sick on the sailboat, I did not have the classic symptoms of someone about to crash from dehydration. Only a blood chemistry analysis let the doctor know that I was actually headed for a medical cliff, and because I was already in the hospital, that was prevented. If we had waited for the classic symptoms of serious dehydration, I would have been in a whole lot of trouble by the time I got to the hospital. The flight surgeon knew something we did not: moving from "Oh spit I really don't feel good" to "How do you call 911 from a sailboat?" can happen very, very rapidly.

Talk to your doctor about how to manage seasickness. Experiment and find out how you react to Bonine, to Dramamine, to the little wrist bands (they don't work for me but some people swear by them), etc. Know yourself. If you're going on any kind of extended trip, have your crew try these things ahead of time as well.

Then talk to your doctor about the realities of sailing (in particular, being some hours from medical help) and ask what you can stock on your boat. I know they make rectal suppositories that can turn off nausea when someone can't keep anything in their stomach long enough to help. If we had had those suppositories on the boat, it might have saved me 2 days in the hospital, with, I think, a $125 deductible for each day for me to pay, plus $250 for my share of the ambulance. If I could have gotten the nausea under control, I could have drunk Gator-Ade, which includes the potassium I needed so desperately. It all might have been a non-event.

This, by the way, answers, forever for me, the question of whether I should *ever* use Navionics on my phone. Never. Again. Ever. Never. Using the chart plotter, you can still see the horizon. If you can see the horizon, you're less likely to get seasick.

I might have gotten sick anyway. I am now on a new blister pack of Prednisone ("You are NOT going sailing while you're on this, right?" the NP asked.) No ma'am. I've learned my lesson! Maybe because I have just been through so much, this round of Prednisone has made me a little nauseous. I've taken Prednisone before without any nausea, but not this time.

Seasickness really can turn into a medical emergency. I never thought it would happen to me, but it did. It is something to be prepared for.

...

Oh yeah -- one more piece of advice, probably something everyone on the planet with a cell phone except me knew: keep a list of emergency numbers with you. If I had done that, I still could have called a friend from the hospital phone. It wouldn't have changed my medical condition, but would have relieved me of the vision of me walking out of the hospital bare-assed!

Dirty Fuel

or, Good heavens -- you have to clean EVERYTHING!

I have had this experience with both outboard and diesel engines. I've never had a gas inboard (ex: Atomic 4), so I can't speak to that.

You wouldn't think anything could grow, thrive and even make huge problems in something that seems as noxious to us as diesel fuel, but unfortunately (as the fellow said in JURASSIC PARK) -- life seems to find a way.

There are critters, most typically a type of algae, who think your tank of diesel is heaven on Earth. Unfortunately like all life forms, they reproduce. Unfortunately like all life forms, they also die.

Once they've died, they settle to the bottom or stick to the sides of your tank, where they may make no problems for years. They may not show up as dirt in either of your fuel filters. They may, however, gather in your fuel line.

You may have no awareness of this until something disturbs either your fuel lines or your fuel tank. 

I have often said that my experience is not as extensive as many, but I have sailed intensively since I started, and I have had several experiences with dirty diesel fuel. Fortunately for me, the first time it happened, I was on someone else's boat. He had been in a three-day race in early January. Now, sailing off Florida in January can be pretty dicey, because when fronts come through from the North, they often pack a punch. On the East coast, the northern wind pushes against the Gulf Stream, which flows roughly from south to north at a pretty good clip. When the two collide, very large waves (especially for newer sailors like us) can be the result. You want to check the weather carefully before crossing the Gulf Stream any time, but in winter it is often a problem.

On the west coast where I live, we have a different set of problems. We get the same north winds, this time blowing over lots of open, relatively shallow water. A minor front can create 8' waves in the Gulf of Mexico near the shore, with even larger waves further off shore. 

But none of this mattered to my friend, who is a master sailor and ardent racer. Nothing stops him, and with his experience he has a solution for everything. One race unfortunately coincided with a stalled front, and winds were high and the waters rough throughout the race. When one of his crew members got so seasick she was dizzy and disoriented, making bad judgment calls and a danger to herself, the rest of the crew simply tied her to the mast so there was no risk of her going overboard. 

His boat performed well in the race, but then he had to move his boat from Clearwater back to Gulfport. It was still too rough to go outside without a full crew, so I went up to Clearwater just to keep him company as he brought the boat down via the more sheltered Intracoastal Waterway. This man loves to teach and pointed out a lot of valuable information to me.

Then came the unintended lessons: right as we were about to go under a bridge, his diesel engine died. He steered the boat through the bridge, glided over to the side of the waterway, and put an anchor down. The problem was immediately obvious: both his Racor filter and his engine filter (often called the "secondary" filter) were black with dirt. He put a plastic red Solo-type cup under the Racor and drained the fuel. He passed the cup to me, and I set it on the nearby galley counter. He changed that filter and the engine filter, and we were shortly on our way. About a half an hour later he pulled the boat over again, put the hook down, and checked the filters, which were clogging up again. He has some clear tubing in his fuel system. He looked at the fuel going to the engine, and it seemed clean, so he started her up again. Eventually she sputtered, but we made it back to Gulfport with just one more round of filter changes.

Unfortunately, it's a very bad idea to drain fuel into a Solo cup. Diesel dissolves that kind of plastic, and we had a mess to clean up in the galley. Keep a glass jar (maybe the size spaghetti sauce comes in) with your engine tools, wrapped against breakage, in case you have to drain your Racor filter.

So then the question was "why?" My friend believes that the rough three days of racing sloshed the fuel around with vigor, essentially scrubbing a lot of dirt collected over years of use back into the fuel. Diesel engines are very sensitive to supply interruption. A tiny air bubble can bring it to a stop, which is why your manual explains how to "bleed" the engine of air bubbles. A tiny bit of water can stop it, which is why you should have a Racor-type filter, which catches water as well as dirt. Dirt in the fuel can stop it. This is all because of the way diesel engines work: very small jets spray a very fine mist of fuel through injectors. Because that spray is so fine, the smallest (noncombustible) thing can replace the diesel, depriving the engine of fuel. Gas engines aren't as sensitive to these things as diesels are. My friend got rid of his fuel and cleaned his tanks, and solved the problem, at last for then.

Eventually my friend needed a new engine, and then he suddenly had fuel interruption problems again. He had his tank cleaned, and got rid of the old fuel (if your boat holds a lot of fuel, there are companies that will "polish" it for you and clean it up) -- but the problem persisted. What my friend eventually discovered was that his fuel lines were so clogged with dirt that it didn't matter how clean his fuel and tank were. He replaced those hoses and had no more problems.

Later on, I also had the same problem, again stemming from sailing in rough water, but in spite of my previous experience with my friend, I didn't realize what the problem was at first. All I knew was that the engine would unexpectedly die. The first time it happened, someone suggested that my propeller had caught a piece of line floating in the water and then released it. He said, "Sometimes that happens." When it happened two more times, however, I discounted that theory. I didn't picture a stray rope catching on my propeller *and* spontaneously freeing itself three times. Each time I bled the engine, and each time the engine started up. I was thinking I had a little air leak in the fuel system somewhere, but I took a "wait and see" attitude. Then one evening while taking the boat out for a moonlight sail on the Gulf with friends, she died completely, and bleeding didn't get her going again. Now, on this engine, parts had to be taken off the engine to get at that filter, and the Racor was in an inaccessible place (if your boat is like that -- move it!) I thought I was out of fuel. With no fuel gauge, it can be hard to know when getting fuel is crucial.

At the fuel dock, the boat took only five gallons. That's when it dawned on me -- dirty fuel. 

Several days later, a friend climbed down into the very deep lazarette at the back of the boat, we pumped out all the dirty fuel, and he cut a hole in the tank. We started passing him pieces of oil pad. My oil pads are about 24" square, and we cut one into fourths. We passed a piece down to him, and he passed it back up soaked up at least 2 lb. of sludge -- and he had barely begun. What a mess, but it had to be done.

This is a big pile of oil pads, sometimes called "engine diapers," but that is also the correct name for

something else, so at the store I suggest you ask for oil pads. You lay one under your engine to catch

oily drips so they don't go into the bilge. Unless you have a big clean-up, if your engine is running properly,

you should just put one under your engine, check it periodically, and replace as necessary. One may

well last a year or more. The material they are made of absorbs petroleum products but not water,

making them very good for cleaning up small petroleum spills. You can buy them in smaller quantities

and for most people, having three or four on hand is plenty.

I was lucky, and my fuel hoses were OK. We had a fabrication shop make a cover for the hole in the fuel tank, with a diesel-resistant gasket (I had them make me a second one to have on hand just in case something happens to the one I have, since it was custom). Surprisingly, that fabrication was inexpensive.

It was a real hassle to do all of that, but I don't worry about getting caught in rough water now. Think about it -- as I've said before, when the ship hits the fan, turning the engine on and being ready to use it can be a good strategy, especially for newer sailors. You need to be sure your tank isn't all clogged up with gunk.

However, I urge you to check with your engine manufacturer and find out which algae-controlling additive they recommend -- and then use that specific brand (and do use it)! I say to check with the manufacturer because part of my problem was that I just picked something off West Marine's shelf. I knew no anti-algae agent had been in the fuel, so I followed the  instructions on the bottle to "shock" the tank by using a larger dose than usual. As it turns out, that can be a very bad idea, because if you have lots of live algae in the tank, they will all die at once, and sink to the bottom, which is where your fuel line picks up its fuel. My problem started when I shocked the fuel with this stuff. When my friend cleaned the tank, he found extra heaps of sludge around the fuel pickup. We had to pass him other tools to clean that area out well.

My Yanmar manual actually states not to use the product I used (sorry but I don't remember the name), so I went to the Yanmar dealer. They showed me exactly what to use and made sure I knew how to use it.

Check both your Racor (a valuable and relatively inexpensive engine protection) and your "secondary" filter (the one built into the engine) periodically as part of sensible routine engine maintenance.



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Gale Sails!

      Or, The Inventor is One Clever Dude!

One important strategy if you get caught in a storm is to have less sail up. It makes sense – if the wind is pushing and pulling your boat harder, it will take less sail area to move the boat when the wind is strong. If you have too much sail up for the weather conditions, we say that your boat is “over-powered.” The boat will heel too much, travel sideways as well as forward, and, if the situation becomes serious, become significantly unstable. It could even tip over a full 90 degrees (called a "knockdown"), possibly damaging the rig and with the real risk of injury to you and your crew. The bow can swing around wildly with the boat rocking forward and backward as well as side to side, an unpleasant ride. It’s important to reduce the amount of sail you have up if you’re in a significant storm – and to me, “significant” means any storm where your standard sail plan overpowers your boat.

In addition to reducing sail surface, reducing the size of both sails helps to keep the boat in balance. When the boat is in balance, the amount of sail up matches the weather conditions, and the headsail and mainsail are working well together. Neither one is too big. A boat that is in balance will respond more reliably to the helm and give the people on the boat a more comfortable ride. You might not think that is important, but some storms last a long time (we had a big storm here about seven weeks ago that lasted for hours), and seasickness is more than nausea – it can make you dizzy and even disoriented. It can seriously incapacitate you or valued crew members. I know a skipper who actually tied a crew member to the mast for her own safety once when she became so seasick, and so disoriented, that the rest of the crew was afraid she might not be able to keep herself on the boat.

On most boats, it should be easy to reduce the size of your mainsail with a good reefing system. The headsail, however, can be more problematical. If you have a hank-on sail, it means going forward, taking the old sail off, and raising the new sail. That’s going to be tricky if you’re by yourself, and best done before the wind picks up (which may happen before the full storm hits you.)

If you have a roller furler, you have different choices. It can be tricky to change sails. You can usually partially furl your headsail, but if you do that often, it is likely to deform your headsail in a significant way, stretching it out and making a pouch in it where there should not be one. Sail fabric near the clew is very stretchy because it’s on the bias, and it will stretch out, especially in a strong wind.

On my boat (and many other boats of that era), it’s more complicated. My roller furler cannot be partially furled. Even if I wanted to take that step, I could not. No matter how you secure the lines, it will fully deploy, a bad thing to have happen in a storm.

But in addition, on boats where the headsail can be partially furled, one has to use the furling line to keep it partially deployed, and that line takes a lot of strain in a storm. Unfortunately, one has to use small-diameter line for the furling line because it all has to fit on the drum. It’s not as strong as thicker line. Sometimes that line breaks, and then you will have an uncontrolled headsail in a storm, not a good situation.

My solution is the ATN Gale Sail. To use a Gale Sail, you completely furl your roller furler, wrapping it only once and letting the sheets hang straight down. The Gale Sail has a leading edge that wraps around the roller furler and is secured with stout barrel clasps. A pendant attaches it at the bottom (I use stainless steel hardware through a hole already drilled into the anchor roller). Five barrel clasps (on my sail) wrap the orange leading edge securely around the roller furler. A spare halyard or spinnaker halyard is used at the top.

 The ATN Gale sail, with its trademark orange

wrap-around luff, deployed

I tested mine last week when we were having a lot of wind. I had an injured back, so although my main was reefed, I did not raise it. While waiting for a bridge to open I was in a wide, deep space, and I sailed the boat around using just the 60 sq ft Gale Sail, the size recommended for my boat.

I was impressed with two things. First of all, it was remarkably easy to handle the sail in the 25 mph winds I was experiencing. My 135% headsail by comparison is a real handful under those conditions and takes considerable strength to manage, even with self-tailing winches and a good winch handle.

More impressively, that very small sail moved my boat at up to 4 knots. What this means is that the sail can pull its weight and really help keep the boat balanced in higher winds.

The Gale Sail does have one drawback: it isn’t a piece of cake to put up (the advertising suggests otherwise). You had better pay attention to the weather and give yourself time to get it deployed, and practice using it before you need to. The more wind a sail is designed to take, the heavier the fabric used is, and the Gale Sail fabric is stout and extremely stiff. It’s tricky to learn how to maneuver the barrel bolts and it won’t go up quickly the first time you use it.

I suggest you use snatch blocks if you can to guide your sheets back to the cockpit. If your boat has rear blocks, as mine does, make sure the sheets you put on your Gale Sail are long enough to use them, because that rear block assures that whatever line you’re using will come to the winch at the proper angle, helping to avoid winch wraps. A winch wrap would be a dangerous complication in a significant storm, another reason to practice how you’re going to handle this sail.

My Gale Sail folds easily and easily fits in its storage bag.

I go a little for the overkill when it comes to safety, and I will keep the Gale Sail on deck, lashed to the starboard lifelines (I keep all obstacles, including spare rope, fenders, etc., on the starboard side, and then know I can always go up the port side unimpeded.) I don’t want to have to use precious time going below and digging it out from under a settee.

I am going to practice with it more and will post an update about how fast I can reasonably expect to get the sail up by myself. Even sailing with someone else, that person would be on the helm while I was putting this sail up. Unless three people are on the boat, I could not be certain I would have help with it.

I am not unequivocally recommending the Gale Sail over other solutions. Most people won’t practice putting it up and might not have enough time to get it up, especially if they haven’t been paying attention to the weather (and unfortunately, many people do not).

A quicker solution is to use a staysail on a second forestay between the mast and the bow, but this is also complicated. That second forestay has to be installed properly, and the added stresses on the mast have to be accounted for. You can’t just put another stay on your boat, then put a sail on it in storm conditions, and not look at the effect on your overall rigging.

However, if you choose this option, you can then have a hank-on sail already latched on to the stay and held over to the side with a bungee (it would be the starboard side on my boat to keep the port side clear) if you anticipate possible bad weather. In a sudden storm, you can get a hank-on sail up faster than you can get a Gale Sail over your roller furler. There’s absolutely no doubt about it.

A staysail has another advantage because its position, slightly closer to the mast, can be a more effective spot for a storm sail than one deployed from your forestay or attached to your roller furler. However, that advantage may be a small one, important if you are a racer but less significant if your goal is simply to get through a storm as comfortably and safely as possible.

If you don’t have a roller furler, the Gale Sail is not suitable for you. But you can have a smaller headsail secured and ready by your forestay. You may even have room enough on the forestay to have that smaller headsail at least partially hanked on before you leave the dock. That depends on the cut of the headsail you use most of the time.

Before making a choice, educate yourself fully regarding how you want to modify your sails in a storm. Don’t just take someone’s word that you “have” to have a staysail, or that hank on headsails are “best,” or that the ATN Gale Sail is the right answer for everyone.

The important thing is to have a storm plan. If it’s warm enough for most people to be sailing, there will often be at least a small chance of a storm. See my soon-to-be-finished entry titled “Storm!” Only a 30% chance of storms was forecasted for that day. It wasn’t typically a time of year where we experience strong storms here. But we experienced a very significant storm that lasted for hours with very little warning. Storms happen, so have a well-thought-out plan.

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The Day I Moved Aboard

     Or, ever have that funny feeling you’ve forgotten something?

So there I was, standing at the dock, a cat carrier in each hand. I’d planned for this day, and two days earlier, had bought the 31’ Hunter I was going to live on. It was November 15, 2010 and I was about to either dazzle or confuse everyone I knew.

I was certain I had thought of everything. I had prepared. I researched living aboard extensively. I knew some people who either had lived aboard a sailboat or were currently living that way, and I quizzed them until their eyes glazed over.

Meanwhile, I bought three plastic storage bins. I put in them the clothes I thought I absolutely had to have. For the next three months, those plastic bins were my closet. If I wanted to wear something that wasn’t in one of the bins, something had to come out (and stay out). So by the time I was ready to move aboard, I had my wardrobe whittled down to a manageable level.

Next, I took a hard look at what I was able to afford. I wanted a boat about 30’ long, because I thought that was the most I could sail safely by myself if caught in a storm. With my budget, I quickly realized that if I got a sound boat, it was unlikely to have a lot of amenities. So … I stopped using my refrigerator and started using an ice chest in the kitchen. I had a friend who lived on his boat without a refrigerator, so I knew it was possible. My sailing club membership includes ice and wasn’t far away, so ice wasn’t a budget-buster.

Finally, I found my boat, and took possession of it on Nov. 13, 2010! I rapidly moved the things I felt I could not live without: my collection of DVD’s, a few pots and pans, herbs and spices. The things I needed to take care of my two cats. Not much.

It didn’t hit me until I stepped into the cockpit with the cats: there was one very serious issue I hadn’t addressed – the possibility of seasickness! As I moved the cats into the cabin, it dawned on me: plenty of people who don’t get seasick in the cockpit get quite sick when they’ve gone below. And I had spent virtually all my time on sailboats in the cockpit. In the cockpit, I had only gotten seasick once, while anchored for five hours in extremely rough water. However, I was spectacularly sick. Many people who don’t normally get seasick do so in the cabin. What if I was one of those people? All my preparation and I didn’t know the answer to that question. I thought, “This may be a very short life style change!”

Fortunately, it turns out that I don’t get seasick in the cabin. Neither did the cats, but it was just pure luck.

LESSON LEARNED: if you’re going to live aboard, spend time in the cabin and make sure you can be comfortable on your boat -- everywhere on the boat.

And, given that one experience with mal de mer, I keep Bonine aboard. I take it if there’s any chance it’s going to be rough.