Ever Been Seasick

It was July or August, and the year was around 1971 to 72. I was working for First Continental Mortgage Company in charge of the Computer Services Department. Some of the other department heads wanted to get as many of the employees as possible to go on a fishing trip offshore from Galveston. At first, I just laughed and did not pay much attention to the discussions. I knew Eva would never agree to go and we had two small children. I had never been offshore before, and I was not sure how I would handle a long boat trip on a fishing charter boat.

As the date for the trip got closer, three of the department heads started teasing me and telling my staff that I was afraid to go on the fishing trip. I had not even talked to Eva about it because I did not expect to go. She told me that I should go with the group and that she and the girls would spend the day with her mom. Eva went to the drugstore and bought me some sea-sick pills. She went to another store to buy me a one-piece jumpsuit to wear on the fishing trip. I gave in and agreed to go.

We were all to meet at the dock and be onboard and ready to pull out by 6:00 a.m. The freeways were much different back in those days, there were no cell phones or GPS to find your way, only an old map. I knew I would not get too much sleep that Friday night, so I decided to wait until our girls had gone to bed and then drive down to Galveston. When I got to Galveston, I drove around until I found where I would be parking my car to get on the boat. I then looked for someplace where I could eat breakfast before it was time to get on the boat. There was a place close by where I parked my car to sleep for a little while. With only a watch and no way to set an alarm, I could not sleep for fear that I would not wake up in time.

I finally went in to eat something and to take my pills for motion sickness. The food was pretty good, but when I was at the dock waiting to get on the boat I thought more about what I had eaten before going out deep sea. The wind had picked up strong, but it was not raining when we were boarding the boat. As I walked by the Captain, I heard him say, “The sea will be rough the ride will be bad, and the fishing will be slow”. The charter boat was a large boat that carried 90 fishers out to the snapper banks. The trip could be 50 to 100 miles offshore.

We had not lost sight of the dock by the time the waves were causing the boat to bounce from side to side. As we got further out, some of the waves would be much higher than the top of the boat. People were hanging on tight to the handrail around the sides of the boat with many emptying their stomachs over the sides. Within the first hour, several had gone below, and others were squeezed inside the cabin. We bounced around, turning side to side to keep the boat heading into the waves to avoid getting caught from the side by one of those huge waves that could capsize the boat. The whole time, I am thinking why don’t we turn back? I did the math – 90 fares at $20 = $1,800 – We are not turning back!

It was around noon when the boat stopped, and the Captain said it was time to wet a line. I felt like a winner, I was still on the deck and ready to fish. I located a pole and was getting ready when the workers put out the churn and poured the bait into the bait troughs around the rail. As soon as I saw it in front of my face, I lost my breakfast from earlier. I felt so bad, so I found my way down below where I could lay down. The smell below was bad but I needed a few minutes to get my stomach back. I fell asleep and the next thing I knew, I heard the motor running again. I went up on deck to find that we were heading back to shore. I had been asleep for hours and missed the fishing. The boat ride back to shore was much smoother and did not take nearly as long to cover the same distance. I learned that one of the people in our group had fallen and twisted his ankle shortly after leaving the dock, but the Captain would not return to shore so Dave sat all day and watched his ankle swell larger. They told me that only five of our group even put a line in the water and only one of them caught a fish.

The following week, someone put a sign up in Dave’s office that said “Captain Dave” and we all had fun laughing at what great anglers we were. The good part of the trip was that we all were closer friends after going together even though nothing went as we expected.