I was sailing an Enterprise dinghy in a severe wind-against-the-tide chop, off the Camel Estuary in Cornwall. After going up and down short, steep waves at least twenty dozenteen times, I realised that my stomach was out of sync with the motion. I had a taste of bile in my mouth after one furious descent, and thought "this is it!"
And then I thought: "But I've no time to be sick. I've a tiller in one hand, the sheet in the other, and my feet are under the toestraps. I'm fully preoccupied with keeping this thing upright, and being sick can't be on the menu."
So it wasn't. Very much a moment where mind overcame matter.
Armed with this experience, a few years later I was Dover-bound on a cross-Channel ferry in truly horrendous weather. People all around me were losing their breakfasts, their dinners-the-night-before, their afternoon-teas-before-that, and their wills-to-live. Vomit was
sloshing around all the passenger areas. At one point I was making my way up the stairs at the aft end of the pitching boat, and found it really hard work. For a moment or two I felt that I weighed twice what I normally do, as the ferry pitched nose-down into a deep trough. "This is amazing" I thought. "You'd pay pounds for this at a funfair." Followed very rapidly by the thought that I'd be experiencing the inverse in a few moments: and it's true - I had to hold onto the handrail because my feet literally
left the stair treads as we pitched nose-up.
Andy