This site says twice that more diving weeks are ruined by this than by anything underwater. Most of what decides your day is settled before the boat leaves the jetty — and almost none of it is settled by how tough you are.
This site says in two places that more diving weeks are ruined by seasickness than by anything underwater, and it is not an exaggeration. The good reefs here are offshore, the crossings are open, and the same northerly that makes this coast world-class for kitesurfing makes those crossings lumpy for everyone else. What is worth knowing is that most of what decides how your day goes is settled before the boat leaves the jetty — what you ate, how much you slept, which trip you booked and where you choose to stand — and almost none of it is settled by how tough you are.
A house reef asks nothing of you. The reefs people fly here for sit an hour or more out, across open water, and that hour is where the day is won or lost. On a liveaboard the crossings are longer again and there is nowhere to get off, which is why the site treats a liveaboard as a different proposition rather than a longer day trip.
A boat under way in a following sea is often easier than the same boat tied to a mooring, rolling side to side while everybody kits up in a confined space with a diesel note in the air. That is the moment most people first feel it, and it catches out anybody expecting the problem to be speed or waves.
Boat days start early, which means a short night, a rushed breakfast or none at all, and a transfer in the dark. Tiredness and an empty stomach both make this considerably worse, and both are decided the evening before rather than on the water.
It is the instinct, and it is precisely wrong. Inside a cabin your eyes tell you the room is still while your inner ear says otherwise, and the mismatch is the whole mechanism. The deck, the air and the horizon are the answer even when they are the last thing you want.
An empty stomach is not protective, which is the most persistent myth about this — something plain an hour or so before helps most people. The night before matters more than the morning of: a late night and a heavy evening are the two most reliable ways to make a boat day worse.
Alcohol the evening before a boat day makes the next morning worse in a way that surprises people who had a perfectly ordinary evening. This is not a moral point and the site has no view on your holiday; it is simply the single most predictable variable.
A shorter crossing to a closer site, a bigger boat, a sheltered bay, or the house reef. This coast has genuinely world-class snorkelling reachable from a beach, which means being prone to seasickness costs you far less here than it would in most places. Booking the long offshore day and hoping is the version that ruins the week.
Options exist, an Egyptian pharmacist is a knowledgeable person to ask, and almost all of it has to be taken before you feel unwell rather than after. The one point that is not a preference: anything that makes you drowsy and scuba diving do not mix, and that is a conversation with your dive centre rather than with a website.
Plenty of people swear by them and the evidence is genuinely mixed. None of them will hurt you, none is a substitute for the deck and the horizon, and if one works for you then it works. Anybody telling you with certainty that these do or do not work is more confident than the evidence.
The middle of the boat moves least and the lower deck moves less than the upper. Outside beats inside every time. This is the same advice a liveaboard crew gives about which cabin to ask for, and it applies just as much to six hours on a day boat.
A fixed, distant point gives your eyes something that agrees with your inner ear. The corollary is the one people ignore: looking down at a phone, a camera screen, a dive computer manual or a book is the fastest way to bring it on.
A small, warm, enclosed space that smells of diesel is the worst place on the boat, and it is where people go when they start to feel it. If you need to be sick, over the side on the lee rail with a crew member near you is better in every respect.
Most people feel markedly better under the surface, which is why the answer is often to dive or snorkel rather than to sit it out. The surface interval is when it comes back, so eat and drink then rather than saving it for later, and stay on deck.
It is embarrassing far out of proportion to how serious it is, and the embarrassment is what sends people below decks to have a much worse day than they needed to.
It is the least remarkable thing that happens on a boat here. Tell somebody rather than trying to hide it — they will move you to a better spot, keep an eye on you, and they would far rather know.
Most people who are unwell on the crossing out are fine by the second dive and fine on the way home. A bad first hour is not a verdict on the rest of the trip, and it is emphatically not a reason to cancel the week.
Being sick in this heat dehydrates you fast, and dehydration on a dive day is its own problem. Small sips, often, and take the rehydration salts the pharmacy sells if it has been a rough morning.
Whether to dive when you have been unwell is the guide’s call and not a matter of pride. They will usually still take you; occasionally they will not, and that is the answer you want from somebody making that decision properly.
Checked 26 July 2026. Rules and prices change — we link official sources so you can confirm on the day. Something out of date? Tell us.