SigurdM

GSOH? What does the acronym mean? Geocacheing Sailor On Holiday? Geocache Sighted On Horizon? Goddammed Sexlife On Hold?

There are a couple of other tips. Try to find a place on the ship which gives you a view of the horizon and is fairly close to the centre of the vessel. The heave effects of pitch and roll are geometrically increased with distance from the centre, so midships is the most comfortable part of the ship to be. It doesn't need to be dead centre. Somewhere in the middle third of the ship is best. Getting some fresh air on a leeward deck is a good idea, but be careful in a cold climate not to get chilled. When you get cold your blood supply goes inwards to the core of the body and your blood pressure can go up. Neither of these things is very helpful if you've got a delicate tummy and you've already got cold and clammy skin from the queaze. Of course, try to find a place which is close to the heads if you think you might need to make a sudden loud call to Hughie on the great white telephone. On a long voyage, where you have a cabin, try to resist the natural urge to go below decks to retire to your bunk if you get queasy. To get your sea legs you really need to let your brain go through the learning process of integrating the sensory input from your eyes with the sensory input from your body's balance mechanism. If you go to your bunk and lie down you will greatly increase the number of hours or even days which you will take to become accustomed to the motion of the ship. I know it's easier to say than for a seasick person to do, but it's very important to try to help your body to deal with the fundamental cause of the problem by letting your brain tie in the input it is getting from your eyes to the input it is getting from your balance mechanism. It can't do that if you are lying down out of sightline of the horizon because your eyes will be seeing a cabin which is not apparently moving but your balance organs and your muscles and skin will be experiencing the motion. Something else which is difficult to do, especially if the eating space has galley smells, but is very important, is to eat something. In the worst case, if you are actually into the upchuck phase of seasickness, you need to have something for your puke reflex to work with. In very rare cases, the tummy muscles and diaphragm can lock into upchuck mode with nothing to bear down on and it can cause a spasm which prevents you from breathing. That's another reason for not retreating to your cabin. Your crew, if they have been well trained, know how to use the heimlich manoeuvre to break you out of such a spasm. Now let's not talk any more about seasickness. Nice avatar, by the way

You lose your tadpole status when you make your 10st post. My post was quite heavy. I think my ex-wife would prefer my status to be listed as Premium Member. How many heavy posts do I have to write to obtain that exalted status? Does it involve kissing frogs or princesses? I've done the former once or twice but not the latter.

isn't Hyoscine the drug that Crippen used to poison his wife with? My second officer did his ship captains medical course a quarter of a century after I did mine and he's much fresher on the pharma stuff. He tells me that hyoscine is the same as scopolomine which is an extremely powerful drug. Scopolamine used to be used in prepping patients for major surgery and was used by the nazis and the east German secret police as a truth drug. My warning about always washing your hands after handling those scopoderm patches is very serious. I once had a perfectly sane person become quite psychotic after accidentally transferring some residue from a scopoderm patch to his mouth. I had to consult medical advice by radio to establish what the hell had happened to him and they figured out that it was the scopoderm patch which had caused the problem. He had been self-treating for toothache with the old sailors remedy of a clove and had stuck his hand into his mouth just after handling a scopoderm patch. Moral of the tale: not only deck varnish does exactly what it says on the tin. Edited to add: hey, I've just been changed from being a tadpole to being a geocacher. How did that happen? How did I skip the frog and the prince stages in my development? I thought I was too old and grey to ever be awarded any more promotion at my time of life.

There is a non-prescription version of Scopoderm. It's in tablet form. I'm told its less effective than the patch. I agree that Stugerone is definitely one of the best of the over the counter remedies, but I would caution its use for passengers on car ferries if they are going to be driving after the voyage. The warning about drowsiness which is mentioned on the packet should not be ignored. Several times I've had cadet officers on Stugerone fall asleep on watch. Not a good career move on any ship of mine and not a good thing to happen if you're driving a car. One problem of the orally dosed medications for seasickness is the obvious one of the victim barfing the pills up. That's something of a gotcha for serious cases of seasickness. Once they get to the puking stage, it's difficult to treat them with anything other than the Scopoderm patch. (or Mr Forrester's remedy) Perhaps I should point out that the majority of people don't suffer from seasickness in normal weather conditions on normal ships and that worrying about seasickness can actually induce the condition. I've never worked one of the wave-piercing hull design ships such as the ferry you are talking about, but looking at her underwater shape and guesstimating her metacentric height I'd say she'll be a good comfortable ride for the vast majority of her passengers.

Forester's cure works, but isn't much use for someone who is actually suffering from Neptune's curse. The best medication I'm aware of is Scopoderm. It's a little circular patch about half an inch in diameter which is stuck onto the skin behind the ear. The active ingredient diffuses through the skin. It is by far the most effective anti-seasickness drug that I've ever issued in more than 30 years of being a qualified deepsea skipper. Place the patch about 8 hours before sailing and remove it immediately after stepping ashore. Be sure to wash your hands after handling the patch as the drug Hyoscine is very powerful. In the UK it is classed as a prescription drug because there are some medical conditions with which its use is incompatible. Your GP will already have your history and may ask a few questions before prescribing the Scopoderm patches. Most people can use it without any problems. There are some listed side-effects, but the most common one which I've observed in seasickness victims to whom I've issued this very effective palliative is that it can cause a headache in some people. Anyone who suffers from seasickness will readily trade a mild headache for the misery which seasickness inflicts upon its victims. Other precautions against seasickness which work include avoiding booze the day before sailing and remaining abstinent during the voyage. Also be sure to eat a good solid meal a few hours before sailing. In the event that you do actually puke, try to drink a good quantity of water, preferably not very cold. On a very short voyage such as across the Irish Sea, it doesn't really apply, but on longer voyages it is very important to eat some good heavy broth with a bit of bread, even though eating is that last thing you want to do when you've got the queaze. The fundamental cause of seasickness is a mismatch between the brain's sensory input from the eyes and the balance mechanism of the inner ear's vestibulary system. To avoid this conflict, try to remain in line of sight with the horizon. It will greatly help to maintain your brain's ability to resolve the internal spatial conflict which triggers the nausea and vomiting reflex. Another useful precaution is to minimise the motion which is upsetting to people who are prone to seasickness. Try to find a place reasonably close to the centre of the ship, from which you can see the horizon. You don't need to stare at the horizon. Just let your peripheral vision have the visual input of the location of the horizon so that the brain's sensory system can integrate the visual input with the dynamic input from the balance organs of the inner ear and the sensations from the skin and muscles which are operating to keep you upright. I apologise to the board if this long treatise is off topic in what is obviously a land-based subject such a geocacheing. In forty years of seafaring I've never suffered even the slightest twinge of seasickness, but I have had several decades worth of experience of dealing with it in other people and I'm very happy to help people to alleviate their problem whenever I can.

" "I came, I sought, I found" - I hope" I've checked with my overeducated second engineer and he tells me that Inveni is the Latin equivalent of the Greek exclamation Eureka. "I have found". He reads a book a day and is disgustingly brilliant at pub quizzes and usually gets the correct answer out before the contestants when we watch university challenge. If he says that Inveni means "I have found" then I'd put money on it, even though I don't allow gambling on my ship.

A four coloured coin. Never seen one of those before. Interesting idea and very creative.

I was wondering the same thing. Why the pseudonyms? I'm Sigurd Mowatt and I'm almost a geocacher. What's wrong with that?

As a complete newcomer myself, I can sympathise with the strangeness feeling that Miss Battery Bunny has expressed. For the past two or three weeks I've been hoping to catch (if that's the word) my first geocache. I've lurked here and elsewhere to try to learn the ropes of this strange landbound hobby because it seems to me to be an ideal way to stretch ones legs ashore without automatically going to the nearest bar. I'd hoped to be able to nab one near Tilbury after Immingham, but we did a very high speed turnaround on that port call. My bo's'n calls those port calls "ricochets" because of the speed with which we cast off so soon after having tied up alongside the wall. Our next port call was another "ricochet" in Germany, and I'd hoped that the next again port would be ideal to visit one of the caches. It was Bergen. Plenty of caches places there, all a very short walk from the quay. What's more, we had a forecast of violent weather so the owners and the chief and I decided to bring forward some deferred maintenance to the prop gland and sit out the storm alongside the wall. I borrowed the wee handheld GPS from the starboard lifeboat and printed the descriptions of two local caches with a view to visiting them and starting my geocaching career. Just before I set foot on the gangway there was a pipe to tell me that there was a phone call for me. It was the owners telling me that an associate company which is head quartered in Bergen had set up a formal dinner do and that I was expected to attend. So it was off with the chinos and on with the number 1 mess dress for a tedious evening of toasts and speeches in starched collars and stiff drinks with a bunch of Norwegians who fondly imagined that they can somehow drink an Orcadian under the table. We are a mixture of viking and pict, so we have a genetic advantage over the pale-haired Noggi folk. It was a good night out, but it scuppered my intended GPS hunt for treasure. The next day was a bit of a blur, with lots of strong black coffee as the Norwegian sailing regulations are ferocious about deck officers blood/alcohol ratio. They insist that there be a high level of blood in your alcohol stream if you are putting to sea. Next port was Lisbon, but that was another ricochet. Onwards to Las Palmas. Here I really thought I would be able to slink away and visit a geocache on a nearby hilltop. That was until I costed the price of a taxi for the day and the price of a day's car hire. Too much money for me for a morning's entertainment. Next port is Kings Bay in Georgia. They can be funny about letting us go ashore on jollies. Sometimes they let us. Sometimes they don't. We shall see. I've already got my pages of nearby geocache material printed out. Hopefully, I shall break my geocaching virginity soon.

For people to have seen an aurora in southern latitudes with such a bright moon as we've had this past week, it must have been a helluva show. I missed it all. We are midway between Gran Canaria and Georgia. Much too far South to have a snowball's chance in hell of seeing the northern lights. A full-blooded display is well worth seeing. It's nature free fireworks show and it only lacks loud music.

Speaking as an Orcadian who is a ferrylouper in this context, and as a complete newcomer to the bigotry of the isolationists who present themselves as "Scotsmen", I'd comment that treasure hunting is best done with an open mind and an open heart. I hope that the navicache.com/geocache.com community is not really as bigoted as it presents itself. Sigurd

Sounds like my idea of a run ashore, but unfortunately my ship will be too far offshore for me to make it. Maybe next time