“You’ll get your sea legs soon enough”, Pete said.

I grunted as I scrubbed the decks with a big wet mop. “This is nothing, anyway. When I was in the Navy, we used to go out in the Bay of Biscay and turn off the motors”. His regional English accent somehow made this sound worse. I don’t know which region, it didn’t matter. My brain was shutting down with the effort of not vomiting. “The ship would roll around in the sea for a few days. Everyone got it all out of their systems soon enough. One poor lad…”. His voice trailed away. The picture of a hundred royal Navy recruits throwing up for two days had pushed me over the line. And over the railing.

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