Sea of Pain, Part III

Once we were actually sailing, I started to feel even greener about the gills. The crew cheerfully mentioned that the currents in the bay are deceptively strong. You’d never know it looking at the surface of the water. I glanced over at Alcatraz, known as “The Rock.” I get it now - why wouldn’t all those escaping prisoners think they couldn’t swim for it? From their cells, they could smell the chocolate from the Ghirardelli Factory. How hard could it be to get there? Well, most of their bodies were never even found. I suppose some of the hardier inmates did eventually taste chocolate again. None of this mattered to me as I was thinking about it, because as much as I love the stuff myself, the thought of chocolate caused my stomach to lurch. Buck up, I told myself!

Was anyone else suffering? Not as far as I could see - everyone seemed to be laughing and drinking. And eating. Ugh, food – uh-oh!…….A moment of reckoning that would soon turn into retching! I knew it was time to act quickly to avoid humiliation. But where did the crew say the facilities were?! Why hadn’t I paid attention? Suddenly, I found myself puking the full 127’ length of the deck! (I had remembered the distance!) Gross! Near the bow, maybe, I just sort of sat myself down, and for a brief moment I thought I felt better. I looked up to see the underside of the Golden Gate Bridge. Cool! And then began heaving again. Michael finally came to my aid (he’d been chatting up a golf buddy) accompanied by the Second Mate. Presumably, the other hands on deck were pushing mops by now. They escorted me down to the bunks and made me eat Dramamine. Not soon enough, I fell asleep in a quasi-coma of shame, desperately hoping no one thought I over-drank and over-ate! And I was fearful that I might have caused the carefully applied varnish to disintegrate, thereby shortening the life of the historic ship. The Second Mate said not to worry. There was some consolation in hearing him say that I wasn’t the first to christen this ship with stomach contents. Some crew members (though not he) had suffered similarly. Some learned in this way that they weren’t cut out for seafaring. I can cross another career off my to-do list! So that was it. No rogue waves. No shark attacks. I was done in by a little pitching and a lot of puking. I missed out on awesome food, wine and potential business, but if the next event is on dry ground, look out!