The Dreaded Drake
Expect the Unexpected
The ship was eerily silent and no one joined me in the dining room for breakfast. Did I miss a shore excursion? Had everyone but me been abducted by the reptilian aliens that allegedly lurk under the Antarctic Ice Shelf? My solitude was broken when a staff member arrived to take my breakfast order and mentioned that most of the other passengers were down and out with seasickness.
Seasickness? How could THEY all be seasick and I wasn’t? I was the Queen of Seasickness, the woman who woofed her cookies just looking at water. I had a perfect track record of becoming deathly ill sailing on ANY seafaring vessel. In fact, I could get queasy in a rowboat, a canoe, or simply bobbing around in a floaty toy.
I was no stranger to the plethora of seasickness prevention remedies and tactics, all guaranteed to make my voyage bon, none of which ever deterred the nasty infliction from knocking me flat out of commission. If my face turned toad-green and my stomach heaved on an innocuous little dolphin watch off South Padre Island, Texas, what horrors awaited me sailing the perilous Drake Passage? I was dreading the treacherous passage, and I felt like a seasick-prone lamb going to the slaughter as the time drew closer to face my nemesis.
The few times I had cellphone reception, I called home and requested prayer support for immunity against seasickness. I didn’t need to go through it again to prove that the standard protocols wouldn’t prevent the seasickness monster from kicking my head in. Of all my options, Prayer had the superior chance of getting me across the Drake in one piece.
The ship veered north into the Drake Passage, passing several long tabular icebergs. These rectangular blocks of ice, characterized by sheer vertical sides and flat tops, are gigantic frozen platforms that have broken away from the ice shelf that surrounds the entire continent of Antarctica.
The ice shelf extends beyond the “ground line” into the ocean, much as your fingernail extends beyond the end of your finger. Occasionally a piece of the ice breaks off, called calving, and these pieces form the tabular icebergs.
The world’s largest recorded tabular iceberg, A-76, broke off the Filchner Ice Shelf into the Weddell Sea in the early spring of 2021. Iceberg A-76 was 106 miles long, 15 miles wide, and had a total mass of 1,668 square miles. It was four times the size of New York City, 30% larger than Rhode Island, and comparable in total area to the Mediterranean island of Majorca, Spain. (That is one BIG ice cube!)
Shortly after its calving in May 2021, A-76 broke apart into three tabular icebergs, the largest of which, A-76A, drifted into the Drake Passage. Images of A-76A captured from NASA’s Terra Satellite on October 31, 2022, revealed the massive iceberg had maintained its original size - 83 miles long and 16 miles wide! After maintaining its stature for almost two years, A-76A finally broke into smaller pieces in the South Atlantic Ocean, 115 miles off the west coast of South Georgia Island.
The ship’s dining room became a scurry of activity, with every staff member on deck moving light furniture and removing everything in the area that was not bolted down. When heavy-duty chains were wheeled in on an industrial-size trolley, I received a first-hand lesson on how to batten down the hatches!
While some staff members stacked chairs, others went to task opening flat metal caps that were strategically inset in the floor around the dining and passenger lounge area. Each floor cap concealed an underlying metal socket containing an industrial strength chain anchor. With team precision, the chain gang clamped the chains to the anchors and wrapped the heavy links around the legs of the sofas, lounge chairs, tables, and larger furniture items. The whole process was completed in less than half an hour. It was a wonder they didn’t chain my legs to the floor in the process.
Meanwhile, Drake was becoming irritated and restless. He started grumbling and hurled some 12 to 15-foot waves at the ship - indicating the start of the Challenge!
The small ship began to creak, moan, and toss. The waves intensified, and seawater splashed onto the large window I sat beside.
The ship rolled and heaved, and the size of the waves increased exponentially. Common sense prompted me to zero in on my surroundings and locate the safest route back to my passenger cabin. I was about to take my first step onto the erratically unpredictable floor when…
CLUNK! Bang, thump… Bang, thump… thump, thump
“¡Cuidado! ¡Fuera del camino! ¡Se rompieron las cadenas de ese sofá!”
"Be careful! Get out of the way! The chains on that couch broke!"
A couch somersaulted across the floor, end to end, like a West Texas tumbleweed blowing over the wide-open plain. Two staff members sprang into action and tackled the wayward couch, grinding it to a stop. It was one flip shy of plowing into a large window in the passenger’s lounge.
This 2-minute video clip is amazingly similar to my encounter with the cantankerous Drake Passage and its tempestuous waves.
From experience, I know that my readers tend to skip videos. So, I only include videos when they will significantly enhance the post.
Watch the video, and you will experience the Drake Passage in action! It’s a WILD RIDE, and I highly recommend it.
If you skipped the video, you are really missing out on something good. Trust me, go back and watch it.
When the gymnastically inclined couch was securely tethered in place by a new set of chains, it was time for me to brave my way across the rolling floor and head down to the safety of my cabin. Less than five steps out, I realized I did not have what my Dad, a WWII sailor in the Canadian Navy, used to refer to as sea legs. A person with sea legs has stability and balance when walking aboard a moving ship, even when it is tossing and rolling in gigantic waves.
The two couch-wrangling staff members sprang into action again - this time to catch me mid-air just before I did a nose-plant on the shifting floor. Apparently, my wobbly not-sea-legs were way out of their league attempting to walk across the topsy-turvy floor. After steadying me on my feet, my rescuers positioned themselves on either side and practically carried me down one deck to my passenger cabin.
My not-sea-legs were of no help to my valiant rescuers, who remarkably walked around without even the slightest falter. They either had superhero sea legs or suction cups on the bottom of their shoes. To me, it appeared like we were walking at a 90° angle. Logically, I knew it was my own sensory illusion. Regardless, it was a disorienting experience that disrupted my equilibrium.
My chivalrous rescuers cautioned me to stay in my cabin for the remainder of the journey, and they would serve meals by room service. Even if I wanted to escape my little safety zone, my not-sea-legs weren’t compatible with the unstable floor.
Although it is only 620 miles across, ALL the ocean waters on Earth eventually flow through the Drake Passage. Not surprisingly, the Drake Passage has more than 600 times the volume of water passing through it than the Amazon River. This relatively narrow passage, situated between the Shetland Islands of Antarctica and the Southern tip of South America, is regarded by most sailors as the most treacherous passage of water on Earth. The Drake Passage is notorious for its strong ocean currents, including the cold Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which flows unencumbered around the entire circumference of Antarctica.
The warmer waters of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans CONVERGE and CLASH in the Drake Passage with the cold waters of the Southern Ocean and its Antarctic Circumpolar Current. The extreme temperature differences of the converging waters result in colossally huge waves, violent storms, bitterly cold winds, and furious cyclones.
The waves in the Drake Passage range between 3 to 65 feet, with the average being 15 feet. There have been 800 recorded shipwrecks and 20,000 lives lost in the Drake Passage. The most recent casualty occurred on December 8, 2022, at 10:40 PM when a 65-foot rogue wave slammed into a Viking Polaris Expedition cruise ship carrying 378 passengers. One person was killed, and four others were injured by the gargantuan wave that seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Passengers reported it felt like the ship ran into a thick cement wall when the wave hit it.
Note: Rogue waves are massive, unpredictable waves, some up to 85 feet high, that strike without warning and occur most commonly in polar waters.
Crossing the Drake Passage is not recommended for novice travelers or the faint of heart.
It was a miracle! An answer to prayer! I did not feel seasick. Perhaps I could relinquish my Queen of Seasickness Crown? The waves on my crossing were in the 30-40 foot range, not those average pip-squeak little 15-foot ripples in the water that would hardly be noticeable. There was no question about it - I got the Real Deal!
The ship climbed way up… up… up… then teetered for a single suspended moment in time before barreling down… down… down. It rolled to the left, swung upright, and tilted to the right as it climbed way up… up… up…
Hey! I recognized that feeling! It felt just like…
Going for a ride on the BRAIN SCRAMBLER at the County Fair felt amazingly similar to CROSSING THE DRAKE! Up, up, up, twist to the left, twist to the right, twirl - Whoosh! Down, down, down. Up, up, up…
There were a couple of differences between the Brain Scrambler and the Drake:
The Scrambler lasted less than five minutes; the Drake voyage lasted 48 hours.
The Scrambler wasn’t REALLY dangerous; the Drake was SERIOUSLY dangerous.
The Captain of the ship announced a change in the itinerary. Due to stormy seas, we would NOT be sailing by Cape Horn; instead, we would be turning east and sailing directly to Ushuaia, Argentina.
Although I am usually the Queen of Seasickness, I was one of the six people aboard the Antarctic Dream who did not get sick crossing the Drake Passage - the other five were crew members. However, I admit, by the time the Captain navigated the ship through the Beagle Sound and into Ushuaia Harbor, I was more than content to stop having my “brains scrambled” on the Drake Passage. It was exhilarating and fun for a while, but 48 hours of brain-scrambling was enough for me. I had my quota. Been there, done that!
This completes my series on Antarctica. I hope you have enjoyed this adventure. If you missed the first four episodes in the Antarctica Series, be sure to check them out on the Expect the Unexpected Substack.
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Awesome funride of an adventure story. Somehow, after reading all the terrifying details and watching the video, part of me wants to go on the scrambler, even though I know I'd get massively seasick. I'm sure that funseeking spirit would be tamed right after the first big wave, though.
Thanks for the read!
Cheers
Have you read The Wager? I got sick just reading this post.