Scop me, baby.

Scopalamine, that is.

The magical little patches that make you not throw up all over the place.  Ask your doctor if Scopalamine is right for you.

All my life I have suffered from motion sickness.  Trains, planes, automobiles, boats, IMAX, 3D, you name it.  Trains and planes I have adjusted to. Automobiles are still iffy if I am riding for long periods int the back of the car. IMAX, forget it.

Boats--yes, and no.  Sometimes, just my pressure wristbands and a bonine and I'm fine.  Other times, it doesn't matter.  And sometimes, just self induced because of imbibing the night before.  For reference see Mal de Mar or Sailing with Dummies.

Because of this, I just had been skeptical of scopalamine, what makes it so special.

So, Tim convinced me that we both need to give it a try.

I'm here to tell you, as somebody that gets violently seasick at times, it works.  But as one of my instructors I worked with used to say: "There's no free lunches."

You place the patch on at least 4 hours before it's needed. I did it the night before.

It was very, very, very odd for me to not have at least one odd symptom of seasickness on the way out the the Tortugas.  And I also think it had this serious mellowing out effect-not a bad thing.  I still didn't have an urge to eat, but I didn't have the acid reflux, nausea or vertigo feeling I can get.

Being on a downwind run did help also.

Here's the big side effect thing.  You get dry mouth, SERIOUSLY DRY MOUTH.  You actually wish there was a dental tech with her little water pick standing beside you at all time.  Because of this, I know I have to make sure there's more water than usual on board for drinking.  But, drinking water. NOT A BAD THING.  I had bought some Lifesavers also, and that helped.

Second side effect kicked in about 48 hours later. Double vision.  I could get my calmed down with my reading glasses. Tim actually put my reading glasses on over his regular glasses.  Not really an issue except when we did our brief night sailing adventure. But for me, any close reading was completely freaked out.

Those side effects are worth the fact that I can move about the boat and hold watch without having a bucket close at hand and also feeling like complete crap.  I now know how it affects me, so I'll prepare accordingly.