Sea Stories - Flying Fish and Sea Sick

When I was a little kid my Father or Grandma or someone had bought me a book about dinosaurs. I'm not sure if it was a used book or not, I remember it had crayon scribbles in it and one of the pages was torn. Still, it had color pictures of dinosaurs in it. My favorite was this 2 page spread of prehistoric creatures of the sea. It had big toothy things with long tails, long-necked Loch Ness dinos, giant fish eating smaller fish, a Megaladon, and up at the top of the page were flying fish.

My 5 year old brain was blown thinking that a billion years ago there were fish that could fly.

Fast forward to April 1990, I had been on the St. Louis for a few weeks and we were rigging up to go out to sea and sail up to Yokosuka Japan. A three day trip at most. I got a little drunk the night before and handled my first sea and anchor detail well. I was feeling a bit hung over though. I had a watch that night, my first at sea watch, and did not feel well after supper.

Next morning a storm brewed up and the seas became rough. Found out my "hangover" was actually sea-sickness. Sea-sick is horrible. This is how I felt:
You are on a carnival ride. You have been drinking a little bit and you just ate a bunch of candy, some corndogs, and a pile of elephant ears or Churros. The ride is really spin-ny and you just gandered upon a guy vomiting into a bucket of greasy pork chops and cigarette butts. You can smell that too. Then you notice you stepped in dog doodoo and it’s all over your shoe. You put your hand in spit.

That sick feeling? It'll go away when you get off the ride, puke, and/or give it some time. You can also move away from the puke, wash your hand of the spit, and take off your doodoo shoe.

Not on a ship. There is no getting off that ride or taking off the doodoo shoe. You also cannot just sit for a second, you've got to work. The sea sickness gets worse too. Like really bad hours into it.

I trudged through my day, other sailors either making fun of me or concerned. I skipped breakfast and lunch but I had a Chief order me to eat supper which I did. I ate some chili mac, a piece of bread, and a cup of red drink affectionately known as "bug juice". I finished and stepped out to the weather decks with my friend Kevin to get some air and a last bit of sunlight.

I lost it all, all that food. I leaned over the side and heaved. Some other Chief was nearby and he came to see if I was OK. My head is over the edge and I'm just letting it all flow out including the red bug juice.

"Oh shit, you're puking blood!!??" yelled the chief.

"No, that's just red bug juice chief." Kevin told him.
"Oh, OK. Make sure he cleans this shit up then." The Chief replied.

Just then, as my head was over the side of the ship and about 35 feet up from the ocean, a school of flying fish, hundreds of them, erupted from the wake of the St. Lou and flew away for about 30-40 yards. Then they dove back into the deep.

I choked out, "Whoa! Flying Fish! **yerch**".

Kevin and Chief look back at me, "Yeah, lots of them out here."

Me, "I thought they were extinct."
Chief, "No you idiot… there's millions of them out here." And he walked away laughing.

I dry heaved a few more times and this is how I learned that flying fish were not extinct. Little did I know this was a beginning of my love/hate relationship with these little fuckers. They would enjoy dying in places I would have to clean them on the weather decks.

This was also the last time I got sea sick while in the Navy. I was fine the next day.