Drake Passage – Day 2: The Drake Shake
DRAKE PASSAGE
Day 2: The Drake Shake
March 06, 2023
PART I
I woke up a couple of times to the sound of water bottles clanging on the cabin floor and pills being blasted from one side of the room to the other. We’d been warned to Drake-proof our rooms, the swaying and rocking threatening to displace every single thing that wasn’t properly secured. Sid didn’t quite follow that instruction. As irritating as that might’ve been, the side-to-side and back-and-forth motion of the Drake cradled me to sleep each time, the churning no doubt aiding my digestion.
Day two and we were well on our way across the Drake Passage, a body of water connecting South America’s Cape Horn to Antarctica’s South Shetland Islands, with a reputation for being one of the most treacherous stretches of ocean in the world, earning it the title of the most powerful convergence of seas. It’s named after Sir Francis Drake, who was born in Devon, England, and began sailing to the West Indies at the age of thirteen (men were built different back then, weren’t they?). Between 1577 and 1580, he circumnavigated the globe, becoming the first Englishman to do so, all while looting Spanish ships and charting newly encountered territories, including waters associated with the then-mythical Terra Australis Incognita.
The Drake lies within the Furious Fifties, the band of ocean between fifty and sixty degrees south. For centuries, sailors feared these latitudes, battered by relentless winds and towering waves that have claimed countless ships and lives. Crossing the Drake is something of a maritime rite of passage, and the journey is rarely smooth. As the old sailor’s saying goes, below forty degrees south there is no law, and below fifty degrees south there is no God. So yeah… Godspeed.
The Drake Shake
We awoke to a relatively calm but steadily rocking Drake, the staff unfazed by the constant motion, seasoned and sure-footed with their sea legs firmly planted. Jonathan rated it a 1/10, explaining that wave heights were averaging around 3.5 metres.
Each increment, he explained, causes an exponential increase in force. A 10/10 Drake would mean waves occasionally reaching up to 12 metres. Whilst our comfortable 1/10 was reassuring to most, a fair few people were still tumbling to the floor or sprinting towards the restroom, some not quite making it in time, or seeking out the ship’s doctor. The majority now sported the fashionable scopolamine patch behind the ear, washed down with a fistful of Dramamine at breakfast.
I, for one, felt a bit queasy, reminded of stormy crossings aboard the Miss Tamara back in Utila. And drunk. I felt genuinely drunk, my walk resembling the weekly wobble back to Underwater Vision after Tequila Tuesday. But I was gonna power through and avoid meds like the plague. If I wanted to become a pirate, I’d have to deal with it, and so I did. I still couldn’t help but wonder what kind of lunatic would’ve dared to cross this passage for the first time. Simply insane.
While our conditions were favourable, it was still rough out there. Out on deck, the wind hit like a slap and stole whatever warmth I’d convinced myself I still had. The sea was nothing but steel and violence, heaving in every direction, and the ship rose and dropped as if it was being toyed with by something bored and massive.
It was just open ocean to every horizon – a cold, endless nowhere that made the world feel suddenly featureless. As sea spray exploded over the deck and salted my lips, my hands welded to the metal as I laughed at how ridiculous it all was – half terrified, half euphoric. Every instinct in my body was screaming that this wasn’t sensible, safe, or normal – and that was exactly the point. I felt more alive than ever, like some wannabe pirate clinging onto life, daring the Drake to do its worst, grinning into the gale like I belonged there.
Drunken Calculations
Breakfast was interesting, and not because of the buffet. Plates and cutlery were flying across the room, occasionally followed by their owners. As the staff masterfully slalomed between unidentified flying objects and balanced impossibly stacked plates, we all watched in awe of their skill. I counted myself lucky just getting my food to the table without dropping anything, never mind carrying three plates per arm!
Nauseous though I might’ve been, I still went all in with three plates. Having spent such an absurd amount of money on this expedition, I started calculating how much food I’d need to eat to break even. Normally, I’d stick to a €25 daily food budget. Here, I figured a day with three full meals would easily cost around €60 ashore, accounting for breakfast, a three-course lunch, and a three-course dinner. Given the buffet-style setup, the sheer variety of international cuisine, and the quality of the food, I found myself having three servings per meal, roughly tripling that figure to €180. Add unlimited coffee and afternoon snacks and that’d be another €20. All in all, I reckoned I was consuming around $200 worth of food per day, adding up to roughly €1,800 over nine days. Not too shabby.
Sure, it cost them far less than that, but if I were to eat the same quantity and quality of food in restaurants, that’d be about right. More importantly, for the first time in seven months, I felt properly well-fed and, blissfully, didn’t have to think about money for even a second.
PART II
Learning While the World Tilts
As Jonathan had asserted, the people who spot the most wildlife are smokers. George, a 58-year-old retired German policeman who would later become something of a legend, Grace, a 60-year-old retired physiotherapist from Canada, Nico, and I could all attest to that. At first, though, all we could see were spouts and birds, and not much else.
That pretty much summed up our Antarctic wildlife knowledge at the time. Fortunately, on days without landings, the schedule was still packed with activities, including lectures from the expedition experts themselves. And when I say lectures, I don’t mean the soul-crushing kind from university. Not at all. These were engaging, relevant, and directly connected to what we were seeing and experiencing. In five years of med school, I don’t recall ever taking notes as eagerly as I did during these sessions.
We had roughly three days’ worth of lectures spread across the voyage, with the Antarctic Gang constantly seeking each other out and sitting together, having bonded ridiculously fast. Nico became my best mate on board, Clara my surrogate mother (apparently I do have mummy issues), Olivia my hero with her endless mountain-biking tales, Megan my big sister with whom I shared a love-hate dynamic, and Steph and Mike the effortlessly cool couple. And what’s better than friends who stick together and learn together?
Champagne Before the Storm
If nothing else, the lectures were an excellent distraction from the Drake, which gradually ramped up to a solid 5 out of 10 as the day wore on.
Jonathan reminded us to count our blessings. Had we been on a ship without stabilisers, things would’ve been significantly worse, and on their previous crossing they’d experienced a 7/10 Drake that forced the cancellation of an entire day of landings. This, he added, was the calmest day of the entire season, and we were apparently lucky. I wasn’t sure I’d go that far, given that climbing stairs with a mug of coffee felt like an Olympic event, and the static build-up from the carpeted floors had me electrocuting myself on every railing I touched. As stoic as I tried to appear, the faint green tinge to my face betrayed me, especially when compared to Nico, who moved around effortlessly.
And so the day unfolded, lecture after lecture. We also had a short photography session with Jaco Beukman, the ship’s resident photographer. He shared tips on wildlife and landscape photography, covering basic camera settings and fundamentals like the rule of thirds and not being afraid to get low for a better angle, rules I’d like to think I’ve mastered over the years, if I may say so myself.
Last but not least came the Captain’s Welcome Cocktail Party. Champagne in hand, we gathered in the lounge as Captain Gilles Cader, a French seaman with over forty years of experience, introduced himself and his crew. This was followed by the daily recap, with Jonathan outlining our progress and plans for the next day. Travelling at around thirteen knots, he reckoned we might gain a head start on our landings if conditions held.
He also warned us about a historically low-pressure system brewing ahead. Still, with another feast on the horizon and an exciting day to look forward to, no one seemed too bothered. Jonathan pointed out that weather forecasts in the Southern Ocean are notoriously unreliable, often wrong by a wide margin due to the collision of cold Antarctic air masses with warmer South American fronts. On top of that, katabatic winds, dense air flowing downslope under gravity from Antarctica’s high interior, are highly localised and largely unpredictable. Cool, cool.
By the end of the day, I couldn’t deny feeling worn out after enduring the Drake Shake. That said, napping through the roughest seas made me feel like I was sleeping on a comfortable rocking chair, waking up strangely refreshed and ready for more.
Day two:
- Weather:
- Overcast and rainy
- Wind: SW 1-3kts
- Wave: E 3m
- Temperature: 7°C
- Weather:
- Position: 57°41’S 64°56’W
- Animals seen:
- Wandering albatross
- Black-browed albatross
- Grey-headed albatross
- Southern giant petrel
- Northern giant petrel*
- Giant petrel sp.
- Sothern fulmar
- Antarctic prion
- Soft-plumaged petrel*
- White-chinned petrel
- Wilson’s storm petrel
- Black-bellied storm petrel
- Southern right whale
* Ones I didn’t get to see myself.