I come from a family of fishermen. My father, my father’s father, his father – three generations of Bogaards, all were experts on the water and the ways of fish, and every one of them spent at least some of their life at sea. One would think, with this resplendent history, that I would be an able and ready seafarer. I certainly thought so, at least until this morning, shortly after boarding the Cat Ferry in Bar Harbor bound for Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. Alas, seaworthiness is not in my genes. The Cat is a big boat – with room for over 250 cars and trucks and over 700 passengers. There are even tour buses on the lower deck. Aside: when your daughter inquires about why they allow tour buses on the ferry, the wrong response is this one (my own): “to see if the ferry will sink on the open ocean, far from shore, you know, like the Titanic.”

Anyway, this boat, traveling across the Bay of Fundy, is a “wave-piercing” catamaran made from “about 32 million soda cans” (says so in their brochure, not very reassuring) and supposedly pierces the waves as a way of reducing “passenger ocean fatigue”. Nonsense. This thing tilts and whirls like one of those cheap rides at a condemned amusement park. So don’t believe all the crap they send you in the brochure. And if you must travel to Nova Scotia, do it by air or car. Or swim (across the Bay of Fundy). All of those would be better options than this one, my present, which involves trying to maintain stasis as the world around me deteriorates into a miasma of nausea (see picture above of fellow passenger, out on the deck for a breath of “fresh air”).

I should add that I am attributing only part of my illness to motion (read sea) sickness. The larger issue for yours truly is the smell of the goddam boat. It is absolutely ghastly. I mean, what a rest home or hospital or morgue, hopped up with diesel, would smell like. One breathes and the only smell is that of ammonia and fuel. There are stewards on board running around with spray bottles of ammonia cleaning up after passengers, who are, well, sick. There is that, and the smell of freshly made popcorn. There is also the clang and whir of slot machines. Canadians want it all, or so it would seem. I used to think hell was Chucky Cheese’s. Not anymore. Hell is the Cat Ferry to Nova Scotia. AVOID AT ALL COSTS.