Is it easy to get seasick?

[Analog187]

Looking to go on our first SDYC cruise in a few months but the wife is concerned that a smaller ship is going to rock a lot and get her sick.  Yes she can use patches and bands but she thinks that might not be enough. 

 

Would appreciate some feedback.  We are looking at a Caribbean itinerary. 

[loving life]

Loll... I laugh because I would have said No, we're pretty tough... But with CLIMATE CHANGE, things are changing.  Jan 2020, just before Covid, we were trying to leave San Juan, the yacht that is.  We were eating dinner outside and the yacht could NOT leave on its own accord, the wind was insane, they attempted to leave the pier with a single Tugboat first, then needed an additional one to get us going, from a Protected pier!!!  Soon after we were finished dinner and in open, CHOPPY, water.  I took a pill, but a bit too late and lay there rocking back and forth in bed thinking, "Oh God, please not this amazing dinner"... After about 60 minutes it was face down in the porcelain.  First time for me after 15 cruises, on Seadream, in the Caribbean.  Anyone could get sick, at anytime - no guarantees.  The winds and waves are much different than they were pre CLIMATE CHANGE.  You just have to try.  I don't think it would last either way, even if you did have a rough night.  The Seadream Crew is really good and keeping everyone comfortable, if they can 🙂.  

 

[Analog187]

I guess what I'm trying to ask is how does the boat movement compare to a regular cruise ship in normal conditions.  Her concern is that smaller boat = more movement.  

 

As a boater my whole life, that makes sense to me but I  also know that most itineraries including the one I'm looking at involves island hopping and the waves aren't as bad closer to land.  

 

So I'm looking for an average to see if this makes sense for us.  I'm dying to go but don't want her to have a bad time 

[Jim Avery]

I have always told people that the SD twins ride the seas very well.  What is known as "sea kindly".  The hull design and low rise construction is far more "ship like" than the newer huge apartment flats on barges.  Yes, you will feel motion but that is not by itself the cause for mal de mer.  Ship; motion is composed of three types:  pitch, roll, and yaw.  How a ship combines all or part of those motions is what is perceived by the inner ear as motion.  Some are more easily affected  than others but in moderate conditions I would prefer the motion on SD to just about any other cruise ship.  I had a 15+ year career at sea so do pretty well with motion but there was this one time,  At the TOYBar, the evil barman was fixing late night shots............😱

[Kitchenl]

I think it also depends on your itinerary and how much open water there is on your cruise.  I have done four different Caribbean itineraries on Seadream and there is only one cruise that I would consider "rough" at times, and I still managed not to get "sick."  I have also experienced unpleasant seas on much bigger ships so it really does depend on the weather conditions and where you are traveling. 

 

Also, most Seadream voyages stop at a different port each day and into the evening, so generally if the seas do get choppy it will occur late in the evening or when going to sleep.  The bigger ships tend to have more sea days where there is more opportunity for rough seas for longer periods of time.

 

With all that being said, I am leaving for my next Seadream cruise on Sunday and hoping the seas cooperate as we cross the Atlantic from West Palm Beach to the Bahamas 😃

 

Hope this helps!  

[Kitchenl]

Also meant to mention that in calm seas there is no difference in motion for me between Seadream and the larger ships, but of course everyone has different levels of tolerance to ship motion. 

[laurelguy]

Love hearing everyone's experiences. Just off SD1 btw and SO good to be back! Everyone worked their tails off to give us a great New Year's. Bravo. YES, I've left San Juan and had horrible seas and wind. I feel for those who don't fare well during this. I agree both ships handle high seas well. Sail on!

[loving life]

12 hours ago, Analog187 said:

I guess what I'm trying to ask is how does the boat movement compare to a regular cruise ship in normal conditions.  Her concern is that smaller boat = more movement.  

 

As a boater my whole life, that makes sense to me but I  also know that most itineraries including the one I'm looking at involves island hopping and the waves aren't as bad closer to land.  

 

So I'm looking for an average to see if this makes sense for us.  I'm dying to go but don't want her to have a bad time 

OK, then I am not the best replier as I have only every sailed Seadream, for the last 17 years.  I was on Royal Caribbean once in 2006 and out in open rough water that tossed us around one afternoon, and I never experienced anything like that on Seadream.  Most of the time you are incredibly protected, rarely in open water and actually rarely "cruising".  We do go "out and in" through the night and it generally feels like a hammock sway. 

[TrapperZimmy]

After cruising on large and mid-size ships, our first SD cruise was out of San Juan.  We had two days at sea through a storm, and I felt awful (though not as bad as many of the passengers who all met the ship's doctor before he could be introduced by the Captain).  I swore I would never go on a small ship again, but then it calmed down and we've done more than 20 cruises on SD.  So much depends upon the weather, which can be calm or wicked.  Last week we had one evening when there was a lot of rock and roll, and it was suggested we eat in the dining room.  But other than that, it was smooth sailing.  Best recommendation is a cabin on deck 2, as close to the elevator as possible.  Low and midship experiences the least motion from the ocean.  It isn't a small ship thing.  We were on Azamara between Haifa and Ashdod during a storm.  A distance of about 24 miles.  One of the worst nights of my life.  Everything in the stateroom was on the floor in the morning.  On Silversea off Viet Nam on formal night.  Got into tuxedo and made it down to the dining room and turned right around.

[knotheadusc]

I typically do get seasick at least once per cruise.  I've done SeaDream three times and Hebridean Princess five times.  Both are very small ships and both focus on keeping people "comfortable" as much as possible.  

 

I did not get seasick on my one Royal Caribbean cruise.  

 

I still like small ships more than big ones, and a little sickness is a small price to pay, as far as I'm concerned.  On the other hand, our last Hebridean cruise had us going through Cape Wrath and that really was a doozy.  

[SWFLAOK]

I get seasick all of the time, just as I got carsick as a child in the backseat of my family's car on the road trip vacations that my father enjoyed. That didn't stop me as an adult from being a boater for over 30 years, and taking our boat to the Bahamas and living on it for 7 winters. Bonine (Meclazine) is my friend, and taking it in advance when the weather is predicted to be bad works for me.

Our first cruise on SD1 was from Barbados to St. Thomas in winter. We saw a cold front heading far south before we boarded. It impacted us and changed several ports. I took my Bonine, and didn't need the barf bags that were left along the hall to our cabins one evening, and had stowed everything in our cabin before we went to breakfast the next morning when plates slid off the tables the next morning.

I still love small ships, and hope our upcoming B2B in March on SD2 gives us our first scheduled cruise in over 2 years. I just checked, and it looks like SD2 has a charter for 12 days before we board in St. Thomas, so I'm a little less confident after reading this. Charters seem to not be good at sea or in the air when it comes to Covid.

[JES4845]

Would underscore several points from others as we just got off our rockiest SD ever last week from Palm Beach to San Juan (over 24 voyages in almost 15 years).  It was like a fine dining venue on a roller coast the entire week, which we never had happen before.  We only got to one of the scheduled ports, kind of.  The rest were improvised.

 

The key is the weather, as others have said.  We had very bad weather luck last week.  The captain joked if you sail if a Scottish captain you might get Scottish weather!  But he and the crew did their best.  Under normal weather, the person who said at night the ship feels like a rocking hammock is spot on.  Take the free SD “candy” for motion sickness and normally you are OK.  Neither my wife nor I got seasick per se, but it was a challenge getting to and using the bathroom, etc.  Several nights things fell on the floor.  We know of several other passengers who said they fell out of bed!

 

Because weather is the key factor and can’t be known far enough in advance of any voyage, going on any ship carries risks with it in terms of how smooth or rocky it will be. What made last week unique in our long SD experience is it was rocky the entire week, while in the past we have had a spell here and there.  Some routes or regions are more rocky than others - the Atlantic for example is rockier than the Med, the northern Caribbean seems to have gotten worse in recent years, and locations like the Bosporus from Istanbul up into the Black Sea are always bad.

[TrapperZimmy]

Time of year is also a factor, even on the same route.  When we did a Baltic cruise, the water was incredibly smooth, but we were told that the cruise before ours was very rough.  On SDI we once spent several days anchored at Virgin Gorda because it was the only calm spot.  SDII was anchored off our starboard.  Surprised Capt. Macleod didn't do something like that.

[Jim Avery]

Like most we have had the occasional rough day.  Sorry you had such a string of bouncy.  I have always said that the motion of the SD ships is fairly comfortable, especially for a small ship.  The worst we ever had was on the giant Queen Mary 2 in the Bay of Biscay.  A nasty motion on that monster.  SD would have been rough but much more tolerable.  So I think your chances of seasick depend more on your personal propensity rather than the nice small ships.🍸

[TrapperZimmy]

When we did the Bay of Biscay on SD, the captain warned us that the motion of the ocean there was notoriously bad.  It might have been the Bonine, but I didn't find it rough at all.  Like I said, timing is everything.

[ronrick1943]

I don’t know, but I can get sea sick on a small pier—-but on SD- never once did I get sick.

[Carnac767]

We were on Norwegian Gem a few years ago heading from New York to San Juan in mid-January.  We were in a 2-br suite on deck 11 and about seven in the morning on day 2 of the cruise the ship took a violent roll (the captain later said it was about 40 degrees).  We had a champagne bucket that went flying across the cabin and all the glassware in the bar crashed to the deck.  We were taking white water over our balcony.  It was a fine Navy day.  It was the first time I'd ever seen sea smoke.  The captain admitted he'd never seen it before in all his years at sea.  Me being a Navy veteran, all I was worried about was if breakfast would be delayed.  😂  It was, as the crew had just set the tables in the dining room and everything went flying.  A 94,000 ton ship was being tossed about like it was a dinghy.  It just highlights that no matter how large your ship is, the ocean is way bigger.  Fortunately, the lumpy seas didn't last much longer.

[Host Dan]

I'm booked on the November transatlantic crossing.  I've done 8 crossings on the SB triplets and never had a problem.  The Atlantic crossings always seemed pretty calm, for the most part!

Fingers and toers crossed!

[TrapperZimmy]

Having never done a crossing, I would except someone with more experience to respond, but I've been told there is extra time built into the schedule to allow the captain to divert to calmer seas.  Frankly, at this point I am less concerned about seasickness than I am about a feeling of confinement.  I have had trouble with back-to-back sea days.

[Jim Avery]

23 hours ago, TrapperZimmy said:

Having never done a crossing, I would except someone with more experience to respond, but I've been told there is extra time built into the schedule to allow the captain to divert to calmer seas.  Frankly, at this point I am less concerned about seasickness than I am about a feeling of confinement.  I have had trouble with back-to-back sea days.

Hi Trap.  Haha sea days are good for you.  Lets you concentrate on your reading and drinking....🥃  Have done many transatlantics but none on SD.  Have been in some bumpy seas on SD in the Med and Caribbean and have said before that the twins have a nice sea kindly motion.  Others mileage may vary but seasick is a personal misery.  When I first went to sea for a living I used to get very ill.  You either get over it or die....😱  Then there is my sister.  Got queasy sitting on our boat tied to the dock on a beautiful day.  No accounting for mal de mer... Hope all is well with y'all and all the best to Zimmy.