Yak Attack

Just sit right back, and you'll hear a tale,

A tale of a fateful trip,

That started in Fort Lauderdale,

Aboard a fishing ship.

To celebrate his birthday last week, Medium Ray decided he wanted to going on a fishing trip. Putting aside the broader question of Jews on a fishing trip, it seemed like a fine idea - Florida's two-week period of spring is here, so it's warm but mild. Even though my interest in catching actual fish is nil, I figured a day with sun and beer could only be good.
Foolish Big Pinz.
First of all, Lady Pinz and I got stuck in Easter Weekend traffic around Fort Lauderdale Beach, so we were running late and everyone else had to cajole the boat to wait for us.
Turns out, we'd have been better off missing it altogether.
For some reason, the water was incredibly choppy, even though it was an otherwise nice day. That made for a rough ride.
Not helping matters was the fact that this was not a pleasure-cruiser. It was a bit old and (not surprisingly) smelled strongly of fish. The only seating were flat, backless wooden benches that lined the rails. The top deck, which was restricted to crew, kept most of the sun away from us.
I don't want to overreact here: nearly everyone on the four-hour trip found it perfectly enjoyable. The boat provided good quality rods and reels and baited all the hooks, etc. All we had to do was cast and relax.
Neither Lady Pinz nor I took Dramamine or anything else. She has been on a number of cruises without problem. I used to cover the Navy when I was a reporter at the newspaper in Jacksonville, and have been through some pretty rough seas on some pretty small ships. Neither of us ever had a problem.
Until Sunday.
Less than 30 minutes into the trip, Lady Pinz was hanging her head over the side and feeding the fish. This certainly would've been enough to send LiAps joining in - he can't stand to smell, hear or, God forbid, see it, and is probably getting nauseous just reading this - but I just felt bad in sympathy, because there was nothing I could do to make her feel better or get the boat to go back in early.
A little bit later, maybe 30 or 45 minutes, I suddenly started feeling flush and dizzy, and I knew my pride (and my breakfast) were about to go overboard.
The crew members and some of the regular fishermen on the boat told us we'd feel much better after having purged.
Oh, how wrong they were.
I managed to avoid getting sick again, but was miserable for the rest of the afternoon. Lady Pinz had it even worse, yawning at the water every 30 or 40 minutes.
To top it all off, hardly any fish were caught the entire day... I think three fish total, only one among our friends, on a boat with maybe 30 people in four hours.
We miserably dragged ourselves home when the boat docked around 5:30, skipping Medium Ray's birthday dinner. We managed to stay awake long enough to take hot showers, slurp down some plain noodles and crawl into bed.
Twelve hours later, when the alarms went off this morning, we both felt nearly human.
The moral of our story? I have no freaking idea, but we have no intention of canceling our cruise this fall.