Cruise Tip #1 Seasickness

Is seasickness something to be concerned about in considering a cruise?

Seasickness is a form of motion sickness. Given the right weather conditions, any ship can move around. After all, ships are moving objects traveling across a liquid medium. However, modern cruise ships bounce around less than airplanes or automobiles.

Most cruises take place in relatively tranquil waters such as the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. Furthermore, using modern weather forecasting equipment, ships try to avoid bad weather. Indeed, there are financial incentives to do so. The shops and casinos on board make no money from passengers who are sick and if people have a bad vacation experience they are unlikely to come back. Moreover, since it requires more power to keep up speed in a rough sea, there is an added fuel cost to charging through bad weather not to mention the additional wear and tear on the ship.

Often seasickness is psychological. People think: “I am on a ship, therefore, I should feel seasick.” In extreme cases, this leads people to complain of seasickness when the ship is still tied to the pier. Accordingly, Jacques Le Tallec, Hotel Director of NCL’s NORWEGIAN DAWN, says: “It is most important to keep the people busy. If you keep them busy, they have no time to think they are seasick.”

There are times, however, when a ship unavoidably encounters bad weather. A number of medical remedies are available. However, as I have never taken any of them and am not a doctor, I am in no position to recommend any or comment on their efficacy.

Some ships will handle rough weather better than others. This ability is not necessarily correlated with size. When the first QUEEN MARY was built in the 1930s, the designers assumed that a ship that large would be stable in the water. However, on her maiden voyage it was discovered that the ship rolled severely (i.e., moved sideways). The roll was eventually reduced when stabilizers were added to the ship in the 1950s.

Today, all modern cruise ships have stabilizers. These devices are shaped like airplane wings and can be extended out from the sides of the ship while at sea. When a wave pushes the ship one way, the stabilizer angles itself so as to exert pressure in the opposite direction. Stabilizers can eliminate up to 80 percent of a ship’s roll.

Unfortunately, stabilizers do nothing to eliminate pitching - - the motion made when the front of the ship goes down and the back goes up and vice versa. The better a ship is at cutting through the waves, the less it will be subject to pitching. Consequently, a ship that is designed with a long, narrow bow will do better in such situations than one with a wide, blunt bow. This is because a ship with a blunt bow will attempt to climb over the wave thereby causing the bow to rise more or will be forced downward thereby causing the stern to rise more than if the ship cut through the wave.

If feasible, the officers will set a course so that the waves are striking the side of the ship rather than the bow because that brings the stabilizers into play. Sometimes, this is not possible.

So, where is the best cabin location if one is concerned about sea sickness? The point on a ship that is least subject to pitching and rolling is in the center of the ship down by the waterline. Think of a ship as an inverted pendulum anchored at the center of the ship. The further you go up the pendulum, the greater the arc. Thus, when the ship is rolling, a cabin on an upper deck is going to move more to either side than one on a lower deck. Similarly, the closer to the front or back of the ship a cabin is, the more it is going to move up and down when the ship is pitching. Since the center of the ship at the waterline is the most stable place on the ship, that was where the designers of QUEEN ELIZABETH 2 choose to put that ship’s hospital which includes an operating room.

The fact that the most stable point on the ship is often occupied by equipment, crew quarters or the lowest grade cabins, is a clear indication that seasickness is not that great a problem on cruise ships. If it were otherwise, the greatest demand would be for the most stable cabins and the most expensive cabins would be interior cabins on the lower decks rather than exterior cabins located on the highest decks often at the front or back of the superstructure.

Finally, selecting a cabin based upon its relative stability is an illusory precaution against seasickness. A ship’s cabin is not like an airline seat where one is going to be in it most of the trip. On a cruise people move about, go to the restaurants, shows, pools and public spaces. The fact that people do go about the ship is another indication that for most people this is not a problem.