Avoiding Travel Sickness on Ferries

Travel sickness can be debilitating for some, especially on long ferry crossings when there’s no let up from the constant motion. However, there are several steps you can take to prevent it, as well as lessen it if you’re unfortunate enough to suffer from it badly.

Skip to: Why People Get Motion Sickness | How To Prevent It | FAQs

The Cause of Travel Sickness

People get travel (motion sickness) due to the repeated movements, which causes your inner ear to send signals to the brain that are different to what your eyes are seeing. It’s these differing messages that your brain is receiving which causes you to feel sick. By understanding this underlying cause it makes it easier to prevent it from happening in a lot of cases.

How to Prevent Motion Sickness

It’s important to reduce the mismatch of signals being sent to your brain and one of the best ways to do this is to focus on a fixed point in the distance, such as the horizon. This helps your brain to determine what ‘level’ is.

You should also:

• Get as much fresh air as you can (travel sickness is often worse in cabins and a quick walk out on deck can help)
• Breath slowly through your mouth and focus on your breathing
• Move towards the middle of the ferry, especially on smaller vessels (a rocking motion is often more pronounced on the bow and stern)
• Try some ginger biscuits or tea (studies have found it can help to reduce nausea)
• Avoid looking at a screen or reading (so that your brain doesn’t get mixed signals of your visual field being fixed/constant versus sensing movement in the inner ear)
• Avoid looking at other moving objects, including rolling waves (focus on a fixed point only!)
• Avoid having a lot of alcohol either before or during the ferry crossing (it’ll only make motion sickness worse)

Sea Sickness Tablets & Bands

There are several types of remedies you can buy over-the-counter to help combat motion sickness:

Hyoscine hydrobromide tablets/patches

These help to relax the muscles in the walls of your stomach and to control the signals sent from your inner ear to your brain during motion. They also block a chemical called acetylcholine to reduce the amount of saliva produced (in an attempt to prevent you from feeling nauseous).

Antihistamine pills/tablets

Over-the-counter medication containing Promethazine or Cinnarizine work by helping to improve blood flow in your inner ear and blocking the effects of histamine in your brain. By blocking the effects, antihistamines can reduce the symptoms of travel sickness.

Sea sickness bands (AKA acupressure bands)

These have a small stud which applies pressure on an acupressure point between the tendons in your wrist. Some people find that this can help relieve nuusea and vomiting, although they don’t work for everyone.

Common questions on travel sickness