Isla Mujeres (Island of Women)

The first time I got seasick, I threw up in my bassinet. My Dad relayed the story to me 50 years after it happened.

My parents moved to Houston in 1949 and once my Dad had sniffed the salt air, he was hooked on sailing. The first boat was a small daysailer that he launched somewhere around the Lynchburg Ferry.

On my first outing, Dad said he was shocked to look down and see that I had thrown up on myself. Little did he know that I would forever fight seasickness.

I am completely fine on bays and inland waters. I have sailed on the Pacific Ocean twice and suffered no problems, but on the Gulf of Mexico with 4’ – 8’ chop, I’m down for the count.

I was 12 years old, the summer my brother Larry (aged 10) and I started ocean racing with Dad on the Rebel, a 35’ Pearson Alberg with a yawl rig. Larry and I started by tending the mizzen (the smaller sail on the back of the boat) along with the mizzen staysail or spinnaker.

We would depart the jetties at Galveston and within an hour, I would lose the contents of my stomach and end up prone on a cockpit seat feeling like death warmed over. Most of the races were only a day or two and I would be sick the whole time.

Once every summer, there was a long race. My first was from Galveston to Biloxi Mississippi. On that race, I recovered on the third day and enjoyed the remainder of the trip.

The Mexico Tourism Department was trying to publicize its new resort locations on the Yucatan Peninsula and offered Isla Mujeres (next to Cancun) as a beautiful destination.

So, in June of 1966, we started from Biloxi Mississippi and sailed south. The winds were light. The seas were small and I was NOT SICK! For the first four days, the Gulf of Mexico was more like Galveston Bay and I was NOT SICK!

Not coincidently, two of my favorite ocean stories were on that passage.

On the third day, we were becalmed. We were off the continental shelf, so the water was very deep and very clear. We were hot and terribly bored, so we decided to go swimming. I put on a mask, snorkel and fins and swam out away from the boat. For those unfamiliar with snorkeling, if you put your face down (using the snorkel to breath), you can float with virtually no effort at all.

The sun was high and it seemed like I could see down forever. The bottom of the ocean was two miles away and for a 14 year-old-boy, that was infinity.

Someone took a tin can from lunch, pealed the label clean and threw it as far as possible in front of the boat. As the boat and I slowly moved past, I watched the reflection of the overhead sun on the sinking can.   At the time, I said that I could still see the glistening can at 200 feet. I have no way of knowing the actual depth, but it began to affect me.

As I laid there not moving, I began to feel that I was suspended in space rather than floating on water.

I was weightless. I was motionless. I was completely tranquil.

I was not observing the ocean, nor in the ocean, I was the ocean.

After several minutes, I swam back to the boat.

 

Later that night…

Dad had set up a great watch system with two guys on three watches. With this system, you had 4 hours on and 8 hours off. Don Haverstock was the Sail Master, and wasn’t assigned a watch, but anytime there was a sail change, he was on deck.

That night, Bill Cook and I had the midnight to 0400 (4:00 am) watch and Don was on deck. The wind was light and the sea was calm and the moon was bright. We were moving, but only barely.

We noticed a mound of fog sitting on the ocean in front of us. It was maybe a mile wide and perhaps 300’ high. It looked like a giant bubble on the ocean.

We were on a designated compass heading that took us right into the fog. There was enough wind to keep the sails from fluttering, but the boat wasn’t making a wave or any noise.

It felt like the fog opened a door and invited us to enter, then silently closed the door behind us. Once inside, the moon illuminated the fog around us like a lamp shade disperses light from a bulb. The water was so calm, that there was no reflection on the surface.

So, just as earlier in the day, it felt like we were suspended in space. Except this time, it was the entire boat and two grown men were experiencing the phenomenon with me.

There was no horizon. The fog and water were reflecting the moonlight equally, so that I couldn’t find a line separating the two. The Rebel could have been going up into the clouds or down into the water.

I was on the helm, Bill was across from me in the cockpit and Don was sitting on the cabin top. We had grown completely silent, almost as if we knew we should.

Bill finally broke the silence by saying, “This is the kind of night that you might expect to see the Flying Dutchman coming at you from right there!” He jabbed his right arm with an extended finger pointing into the night.

Of course, we all laughed mightily. Then, conversation ensued and the spell was broken. Half an hour later we sailed out of the fog. We watched it slowly disappear off the transom.

Bill Cook was a manly man. Physically…very strong. Quiet, but a man among men. Now, 51 years later, I have complete, vivid recall of him pointing to the Flying Dutchman ghost ship.

We were on port tack. The slight breeze was just forward the beam.

He pointed about 20 degrees above the water.

He pointed up…into the fog.

 

The wind came up the next day and pushed us toward Mexico. We were going south in the north-bound Gulf Stream with the western tip of Cuba off our port side.

Our navigation system was Dead Reckoning and Celestial. Dad used a sextant that is in my closet today. He would shoot the moon or stars or sun, go below and do a long series of mathematical calculations for an hour or so. (Remember, no hand calculators in 1966.)

He would mark a paper chart showing our approximate location. Standing still on land, Celestial Navigation is accurate to a mile or less, but on the pitching deck of a 35’ sailboat, it’s several miles or more.

In the summer of 1966, there were no weather satellites, no hand calculators and our method of navigation (the sextant) was technology that originated in the 1600’s. The only form of communication was a VHF radio with a range of a few dozen miles.

I know this feels like ancient history, but I witnessed it and I don’t feel ancient. While we were wandering around the Gulf of Mexico that summer, the scientists at NASA were changing everything. The space program brought satellites, calculators, advancements in computing, communication and navigation that changed the world. And, oh by the way, they landed a man on the moon three years later.

It has been reported that even space travelers with iron stomachs are often susceptible to motion sickness. I’m pretty sure I’ll never get the chance to go into space, but if I do, I’m taking a bunch of barf bags.