The Drake Passage

“Strange. There is always sadness on departure. It is as if one cannot after all bear to leave this bleak waste of ice, glaciers, cold and toil…” – Fridjof Nansen, 1912

“Lands doomed by Nature to perpetual frigidness, never to feel the warmth of the Sun’s rays, whose horrible and savage aspect I have not words to describe. Such are the lands we have discovered. What then may we expect those to be which lie still further to the south? For we may reasonably suppose that we have seen the best, as lying most to the north. If anyone should have resolution and perseverance to clear up this point by proceeding farther than I have done, I shall not envy him the honour of the discovery.” – From the journal of Captain James Cook, H.M.S. Resolution 1775

Trying to sleep that night was an exercise in futility as the ship rocked well past 45-degree angles on either side at certain points…I moved both mattresses (having my own room was definitely a plus that night) off the bunks, placing one of the mattresses on the floor, wedging the other between myself and the wall, with a buffer of pillows on the other side, and hanging on for dear life...

By way of note from our expedition leader Conrad, the weather forecast came in and the next 24 hours are expected to be “rough”, with the rumor of 15-meter (yes, almost 50 foot) swells.

The Drake Passage is a body of water that stretches some 800km (500 miles) between Cape Horn, Chile, the southernmost tip of South America, and Greenwich Island in the South Shetland Islands archipelago just north of the Antarctic Peninsula, dividing the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The Passage is named after Sir Francis Drake, a 16th century English privateer who never actually sailed the passage… selecting the far smoother Strait of Magellan that connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through Tierra del Fuego. Captain Willem Schouten achieved the first recorded passage across the Drake in 1616 on the ship Eendracht.

Due to the lack of any significant landmasses at the latitudes of the Drake, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (carrying a volume of water equivalent to 600 times the flow of the Amazon River) moves unimpeded around Antarctica and through the Drake Passage. The unimpeded flows create perfect conditions for some of the roughest, most treacherous seas in the world…which we were about to experience first hand.

Bucking my better judgment and any remaining loyalty I may still have to my stomach after almost 3 weeks of voyaging in the Southern Ocean, I wrestled my way to the top deck (along with Koral, my very brave and equally insane companion) in the late afternoon as the Professor Multanovskiy emerged into the high seas of the notorious Drake Passage after passing between Livingstone Island and King George Island in the South Shetlands archipelago.

While I certainly can’t eyeball the height of waves, they were beyond huge and, in collaboration with the 50+ knot winds, required four contact points (sorry folks, I didn’t get any camera shots…but I think Sue, our geologist, snapped a few from inside the protection of the bridge...will upload them when/if I can get them).

At one point in our very brief (less than 5 minutes) wild ride up top, I could’ve sworn that the bow of the vessel dipped underwater after cresting a swell and crashing down into the next one.  It was definitely the coolest roller coaster I’ve ever ridden.

Trying to sleep that night was an exercise in futility as the ship rocked well past 45-degree angles on either side at certain points…I moved both mattresses (having my own room was definitely a plus that night) off the bunks, placing one of the mattresses on the floor, wedging the other between myself and the wall, with a buffer of pillows on the other side, and hanging on for dear life (all the motion sickness meds in the world won’t bring on sleep in those seas). I heard the next day that some of my fellow passengers had been tossed right out bed onto the floor in the middle of the night.

Thankfully, the high seas abated somewhat the following afternoon and we cruised on to Ushuaia…