Anti-Seasickness Medication
I was lucky enough to fish my wife and two of her friends in the “Poor Girls Sailfish Tournament”. Her only reservation about participating in the tournament was about how big the waves would be and if she would get sea sick, since everyone knows it can be really miserable on a boat all day when you are nauseous. I assured her that it would be flat calm and she had me sign them all up. Normally when she has been out fishing, she uses the patch that goes behind the ear, but it’s a prescription patch and she didn’t have any more. By the time the day of the tournament had arrived, it was too late to get one so the drug of choice for her was Dramamine. At first, I went to the store and got her some “all natural” Dramamine, since she normally likes to take the holistic route, but she said no way was she risking that and sent me right back for the “real stuff”. Sure enough, the day came and it was blowing 20 knots out of the southeast with 6 foot plus seas. The look on her face that morning was pure dread and fear as the wind was whipping through the marina. I thought she might cry when we got out there and the waves were cresting and much higher than the boat. So, needless to say, my wife took Dramamine, one of her friends took a Dramamine knockoff and the other took Bonine. They all took one the night before and again in the morning before heading out. We set off in the morning and boy were the seas big! The girls started off great! We started to put out our baits and right off the bat a sailfish bit the right short. My wife grabbed the rod and caught it within about 5 minutes. Not an easy task with the big seas. We caught the first fish of the day and the mood and morale was great on the boat… at least for a little while.
We got our baits back out and waited. The fishing was on the slow side and the rolling of the boat, and the drugs, started affecting the girls in different ways - one was nauseous, despite the Bonine, and the other, who took the Dramamine knockoff, was unusually quiet and pale, trying like heck to keep her eyes open and be a trooper. Much to my surprise, my wife was doing just fine, which I really didn’t expect, but I was happy to not have her trying to convince me we needed to go back in. At some point a little later, when the drugs weren’t working for my wife’s friends, we had some simultaneous chum slicks being formed on either side of the boat. One of the girls bounced back up and decided a little champagne may help the cause and she rallied. The other friend took a long nap on the hard floor until we moved her to a comfortable bean bag chair. The girls were troopers and wouldn’t throw in the towel or complain. The sailfish bite was slow overall. After a few more hours, we had another bite. This time my wife accidentally wrapped the line around the handle of the reel on the drop back. After trying to untangle it for about 30 seconds, the line broke, but somehow got wrapped back up in the spool, which was a miracle. We still had the fish on, but only about 30 yards of line to work with. We tried hard to stay with the fish, but it was rough and it finally went under the boat and got away. Crazy that after all of that, we still almost caught him. That was our last sail bite of the day, but it woke up the other friend and she rallied the rest of the day and almost caught a mahi mahi herself. We had a lot of fun despite the huge waves and rough seas and, at the end, everyone was up and having a good time. The moral of the story is that it didn’t seem to matter what drug you took, the effects were different for everyone, but at least I now know how to get my wife out there again.
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