I held tight to the bowl as the room dropped, my stomach gave a heave coinciding with the floor lurching under me. I was already as empty as it was possible to be, but my body retched and heaved again, producing a thin trail of bitter yellow bile that dripped between my gaping mouth and the toilet.
A rattle on the door behind me and a "Jason, you ok Babe?" let me know that Karin, my wife, was at least concerned I was still alive. I was still alive but would at that moment have taken death as a sweet merciful release.
"Not dead yet Babe. Blleeuuuurrggghh" I heaved again.
She offered some useful advice, "Try to drink some water, you'll feel better with something to bring up" The door opened, and she leaned in, holding a bottle of still water out to me together with a pack of antacids. Her tightly filled pink T shirt and blonde hair did nothing to distract me from my misery. I wouldn't mind but this whale watching trip was my idea.
I'd been out early in the morning of our second day in the Caribbean, looking for fresh fish for a barbecue we had planned for lunch when I spotted the advert.
"Humpbacks, Orcas, Sperm Whales, Dolphins, Sharks. See the wonders of the deep on the Blue Sea Cruiser"
Now, I know how much Karin's into all that David Attenborough stuff and I thought a day up close and personal with a couple of mighty beasts of the ocean would score me more brownie points than I would know what to do with, so I booked us a couple of tickets for the next day.
We'd booked off season, basically because we aren't made of money, so it meant some of the attractions were closed, but in this case it meant we were one of only two couples on the boat, so some wins. The others were an older couple from Tennessee, taking a longer break, as they explained they normally went to Florida and the Caribbean a few times a year, usually outside the peak tourist season. We'd bumped into them in the bar nearest our hotel on the first day we'd been there, enjoying a convivial lunch over a couple of jugs, ok four jugs of a local take on Pina Coladas.
The weather was still hot and sunny, but I discovered when we went out that the being in the middle of the Atlantic means that when it gets rough, it really gets rough.
Charles and Rhodey, the two crew members assured us it wasn't rough as we chugged out of the harbour into waves that seemed to be bigger than our house. Karin, Margaret and Virgil (The American couple) all seemed to take to the ocean as if born to it. To be fair Virgil was a US Navy veteran, so he probably was born to it. I however was not, and as soon as the deck started moving underneath me I felt the first twinge, rapidly followed by the second twinge, then a turning of my stomach and a quite spectacular projectile arc as I emptied the contents of my stomach over the side.
I held onto the safety rail, coughing and heaving, watching my lunch spread in the deep blue waters beneath us. A shoal of tiny silvery fish came up and started feasting on my detritus. The thought turned my stomach again, and I gave them a second course.
Rhodey was the younger of the two, a six-foot tall white guy with a deep tan, in his early twenties. He wore a loose vest top that showed off his honed physique. He spotted me and came over to suggest I used the heads, which confused me until he pointed to the bathroom and said he didn't want to have to jump overboard to rescue me if I fell in. Which is how I ended up where you joined me.
I chewed on a couple of the chalky mint pills and sipped on the water. I will say it felt better heaving up minty water than stomach bile, and that was the highlight of my day.
Charles was the senior man on the boat and after I'd been trying to turn myself inside out for an hour he came down to see me. He was probably ten years older than Rhodey, around five eleven, he was a local Islander, athletic with cornrows in his wiry black hair but a lot broader than his crewmate, looking like he could be an American footballer, one of the outside running ones, not one of the big bashy hitty ones. I don't know much about American Football, does it show?
"Hey man, how you doin'?" he asked, I thought it was a bit of a fatuous question, I was hoping for a swift death.
"Not so good, I didn't know it would be so bad."
"Not to worry man, it affects everyone different. Look, I can either refund your ticket, you're not gonna see nothin' here, or I keep the money but take you ashore now and go out again with the others."
I was not in a state to make a choice really, but I knew I was likely to give myself some long-term aftereffects like severe dehydration if I didn't get onto solid ground, so I went with option two. He went back on deck and explained to the other three what was going to happen. The engine noise changed to a more rapid beat, I assume the boat sped up and I felt it lean as we turned. Karin came back to see me again, but I waved her away, preferring to take my misery alone. I guess we were moving faster on the way back in as the world stayed a bit more stable and I was only sick twice.
Back on the dockside I perked up fairly quickly, returning to a healthy pink from my earlier green. Karin and I had a two-minute discussion where I insisted she went out on the boat; I'd go and sit under a tree with a bottle of water and a bread roll.
They were gone nearly three hours, I was on the dockside to meet Karin off the boat and got an exuberant welcome, she flicked through the screen of her iPhone, proudly showing me clips of big grey things rolling in the water, pictures of whale tails waving in the air and one of some dolphins jumping out of the water. I was less interested in a couple of pictures of the two crewmen with their shirts off and was a bit taken aback at one of her in her bikini being held horizontally by them facing out to the camera, but then next up was one of Margaret in her one-piece doing the same thing so my worries abated.
It's a sign how rough I still felt that I took no notice of how nicely filled Margaret's skimpy one piece actually was. For a woman in her mid-forties, she looked really good, she could easily have been ten years younger.
I didn't really feel like doing much in the evening after my session in the ships toilet, I didn't want to eat, my stomach was still quite sore and all I could drink was water, so I was more than happy to stay in watching the hotel band. Karin had other plans, Rhodey and Charles had told her about the beauty of a night-time cruise, the stars were big, and bright with a lot more visible than we get at home, the plankton rose to the surface after dark and glowed in the boat's wake. Dolphins and sea birds would circle the boat. Flying fish would jump out and glide across the sea. If it weren't for the thought of puking my ring out again, I'd have been there myself.
Virgil and Margaret were going out on the night cruise as well and called by our hotel to walk down with Karin. Meeting them when I didn't feel as if I were about to breathe my last was a different experience. Virgil was the older of the two by some considerable distance, he was wearing a USS Kittyhawk CV63 baseball cap, which he told me was from his service at sea from 1974 to 177, which would make him around late-sixties I guessed, Margaret was early forties but looked younger. I waved them all away and took myself off for an early night.
I slept solidly until around 1am when Karin got home, normally we try not to wake each other up if we come back late but something had happened, and she couldn't wait to share it.
