Let’s say you are on a boat, and you do not enjoy the sights and sounds of vomiting. You are also keenly aware that the bracing ocean breeze can carry…projectile stuff, you know, upwards-like, maybe onto your clothes and/or face. You, then, want to avoid standing near a seasick person.

Identifying a seasick person once the stage of Unavoidable Barfing has been reached is a pretty straightforward process. But by then, it may be too late for you to position yourself safely on the other side of the boat. It would be nice if the seasick person could warn you in advance, but this person has likely been fighting desperately to not vomit for quite some time, and opening their mouth to speak may well result in stomach contents coming out.

So how is one to predict this unfortunate event before it happens? Luckily, there are some warning signs. The first one that comes to mind is “is the person me, and am I on a boat?” If the answer to both is yes, then yeah, there’s a good chance you should get away from me. But let’s say you don’t know who the hell I am (shocking, but possible), and need more general information. So here are some things to watch for:

1. The Person Is Staring Unceasingly into the Distance (No Matter What)

The seasick person, after a few experiences with the affliction,¹ may have discovered that the only thing they can do to get any relief is to stare at a completely unobstructed view of the ocean. Specifically, the horizon. All the time. Constantly. Literally not taking their eyes off it for a second. If they look at anything closer, the nausea immediately worsens.²

It can be perfectly normal to stare at the ocean when on a boat. Sometimes there’s not much else to do. Sometimes you’re on a wildlife-viewing trip, and everybody is staring at the ocean in order to view the wildlife.

But a seasick person may stare at it regardless of all other stimuli. Depending how long they have been enduring the seasickness, their brain may have shrunk into a single fiery point of desire. At this stage, their only concern is to make the dizziness and nausea less terrible, or at least keep it from getting worse. All other fucks are cast aside. Other facets of reality become an oatmeal-like mush in the background.

In this state, there is little reaction to unrelated concerns. If you speak to them, they may only respond with a faint noise. If a whale breaches in front of them, they are silently annoyed at the whale for messing up their view. If a person on the other side of the boat yells “oh my god a fucking kraken!” the seasick person will not move. It is entirely possible that even as the kraken’s tentacles envelop the vessel and people start screaming to abandon ship, the seasick person will not react until tentacles or large arterial sprays of blood obstruct their view, and it finally occurs to them that their priorities should probably shift a bit.

2. The Person is Standing Near the Side of the Boat and Has Not Moved for Hours (Or, they Tried to Move, and Immediately Returned to Their Previous Position)

A person is standing at the side of the boat. Totally normal.

A person is standing at the side of the boat for six hours without moving? Not so much.

Standing at the side of a bouncing boat for hours and hours is not a pleasant experience. In fact, it becomes extremely tiring after a while. The boat is going up and down and back and forth; if you are standing, you have to use the strength of your legs–and then your arms, when your legs get tired and you have to grasp and/or lean on stuff–to compensate for the motion.

The seasick person who has been standing there for hours probably wants to sit down. But in order to have an unobstructed view of the sea, they might have to remain standing. Maybe the person will eventually try to sit down, and then realize that something is in the way of their view — the railing, or hull of the boat, or someone standing in front of them — and they will be forced back up again, struggling not to fall over while the rocking ocean sloshes their brains around.

Possibly, they have also read that your body might acclimate quicker to the movement of the ocean if you remain standing. Or that, maybe, using a wider stance (also standing) could help stabilize you.³

But, even if none of those apply, standing at the railing can also be a sign that the person recognizes the likelihood they will need an ocean to throw up into.

3. The Person Is Out on the Deck for Hours and Hours, Doing Practically Nothing to Mitigate the Effects of the Weather

Is it raining outside? Is it cold? Is the sun a roiling hell-sphere of ultraviolet pain? And the person is still standing directly out in it, all day, perhaps deep into the night, staring at the ocean like a sexy cuttlefish-skinned primordial goddess is going to burst forth from it at any moment?

Maybe they are sitting in direct sunlight, their skin visibly burning. Maybe their lips are all dry and shriveled-looking, but they aren’t drinking water. Or maybe they are sitting in the cold, clutching themselves like they’re afraid their torso might fall off if they don’t physically hold it there, but they refuse to go into the cabin to get out of the wind.

Maybe they have a bag by their feet with sunscreen, a towel, and a water bottle inside, but it remains untouched.

What the hell is wrong with them, you may wonder. Why can’t they perform extremely basic survival tasks? Have they gone into a trance state of some kind, numb to all outside sensations, their mind soaring through the consciousnesses of weevils and Greenland sharks, hearing the sounds of tiny ice shards congealing around dust particles in the sky?

Probably not. I mean, I can’t say it’s impossible. But I’d guess it’s more likely that this person is furiously seasick, and just as furiously trying not to be.

stuck to the sea

The seasick person may be so helplessly shackled to the task of staring at the ocean that they cannot move. This means they may not go into a cabin to get out of the elements–even if it has windows. Windows are attached to walls, which can bounce around with the boat and fuck up the stability of the horizon-line. The air is often more condensed in a cabin as well. This can amplify various smells that increase nausea: boat engine smells, body odor smells, food prep smells from the dinner that for some fucking reason includes fermented fish sauce, etcetera.

The seasick person also cannot look down to retrieve something on the deck without the risk of throwing up. (I meant that “literally not even a second” thing that I said above.) Bending over may be especially risky. A movement that inherently results in positional dickery only increases the dizziness and nausea.

Thus, they are stuck where they are, as they are, freezing or burning or damp or dehydrated, as though they pissed off a witch who sneezed while reciting the last line of a paralysis spell. They are painfully aware of these things, but the militant single-minded purpose of easing their nausea is inescapable. Everything else becomes secondary.

4. The Person is Working Their Jaw and Swallowing a Lot

This is just a general sign that someone is about to throw up. Still, if you see this, move immediately. Saliva is pooling in their mouth as a prelude to vomiting. Once this happens, barfing is almost certainly going to occur, and very, very soon.

What to Do With the Seasick Person

If you are a kind soul, you may not simply be concerned with getting yourself away from a seasick person. You may also wonder how to help.

I can only speak from my own experience. Other peoples’ may vary. But if other seasickees are like me, here is what to do:

If they are currently throwing up, the most important thing is to move far away from them and ignore it.

I mean, again, experiences vary, but to me, throwing up in public is a) embarrassing and b) gross, and also there is sometimes stuff I need to wipe off my face that I would really rather no one saw or acknowledged at all. It is far, far better if there is at least the illusion of privacy.

And this may be all you ever need to do. Simply not addressing it at all is a perfectly good response, especially if you don’t know this person. There’s not much you can do to help them at this point. All you can control is the social awkwardness of the situation, which can be mitigated by pretending the situation does not exist.

but if you have to do something

If you do need to insert yourself — if, say, this is a friend or relative of yours, and ignoring it is not an option: again, wait until they are done with the current bout of vomiting. The rule of “move away and pretend it’s not happening” still applies. It’s also nice to wait a minute or so after, to give them time to recover.

After it is over, there may be a temporary lull in the nausea. Here, you might be able to do something for them. As I said, there’s not much that you can do about the seasickness itself, short of creating a distraction by throwing a bucket of chum on the captain and opening the window for seabirds to mob his be-chummed face while a co-conspirator takes the helm and steers the boat to the nearest land mass. Which I am not at all suggesting, or condoning.

But there may be other stressors on their body that make the situation worse, and you can try to remedy these.

offerings to the seasick

The seasick person, trapped in their unremitting ocean-staring contest, may be thirsty, burned, cold, hot, hungry, bladder-stressed, blinded by sunlight, and so on. These are things you might be able to help with.

You can offer water–even if they refuse to drink it, they can at least rinse their mouth out. You can sploot some sunscreen into their hand so they can apply it without having to search through a bag. You can offer bland snacks like crackers or bread, although the person may look at you like you’re insane. You could wrap the person in a warm thing if it’s cold, or a wet thing if it’s hot. You could get a bucket, and, for the penisless, fashion a strap-on device out of a plastic bottle with a hole cut in the bottom for them to pee into the bucket.

In other words, consider basic human needs. Then get creative about meeting them without the person having to move their head. The seasickee may not accept all these things, but at least you’ve made them accessible.

Don’t talk to them more than absolutely necessary, unless they speak first. Talking might be a sickening activity, depending how much the vomiting eased their symptoms for the time being. If they do talk, don’t ask many questions. Be sympathetic, but do not let them do anything particularly ill-thought-out. If they express a desire to jump overboard, or to burn the entire boat, gently remind them that it is not the boat that is the enemy, but the ocean, and the boat is necessary to get away from the ocean.

If they express a desire to burn the ocean, it’s probably best to just agree with them.

the long haul

I did say the lull would be temporary. As long as the boat continues to feel like riding a peg-legged camel on meth through a field of trampolines, the seasickness will persist. That is, unless the trip is long enough for them to get used to the movement, which is a thing that various sources promise will happen in most situations, but not a thing I have personally experienced.⁴

(I have, however, experienced trips that were long enough I eventually became too exhausted to stay upright, and then too exhausted to stay awake, and was eventually able to sleep. So there is potentially that.)

Most likely, the seasick person will quickly resume their desperate battle with the urge to vomit. And they will probably lose that battle several more times.

Just let them have their space and their view of the ocean. Don’t talk to them much, or at all. Go do whatever boat stuff you’re doing. Maybe come back periodically and try to hand them more water and food and make sure they haven’t tried to smack themselves unconscious with a toilet lid or whatever.

If you feel guilty about leaving them alone, remember that the purity of their misery is such that it cannot be exacerbated by you having a nice time, and it cannot be alleviated by you standing around acting sad about it. In fact, they may be barely aware of anything at this point other than their sickness. And possibly their now all-consuming, near-delirious hatred of the ocean.

aftercare of the recovered seasickee

Once the boat trip is over, the seasick person should experience immediate relief. However, their asshole brain may continue to produce a slight “we’re still on a boat” sensation for a while. This may make them more prone to queasiness than usual. They may also be fucking exhausted. Let them shower and sleep, and maybe avoid sushi dinners and roller coasters for a little while.

And next time they say they want to do a boat trip, smack them in the face gently remind them to go to the doctor to ask about a scopolamine patch. Or, maybe, suggest an alternative outing that keeps them firmly on the shore.

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¹ You may wonder why a person who gets seasick would keep going on boats. Thing is, there are many purported seasickness-prevention remedies and strategies that a person may try, but cannot know the efficacy of until one is on a boat. Also, possibly, boat trips are the best way to go see some sort of marine creature, and the person in question is weirdly determined to go look at marine creatures for reasons no one understands.

² It is not fully known what causes seasickness. But even among different theories, “look at the horizon” is a pretty constant recommendation. And in my personal experience so far, is the only thing that helps at all once it starts. In fact, anything that gets in the way of the view of the horizon, even in my peripheral vision, ruins the effect because it’s going to be moving (the side of the boat, another person standing on the boat, etc).

³ I either do not have the stamina or leg strength to test either of these out for very long. It’s very tiring to stand on the deck of a pitching ship and I’m not Dwayne fuckin Johnson.

⁴ The longest I have been on a boat is five days. The amount of seasickness corresponded with how much wind there was and how much motion there was in the water, regardless of how long I had been on the boat.