Drake Passage

We leave port in glorious evening sunshine and with dead flat seas finding it hardly credible that we are within a few days of experiencing the conditions of a Polar Desert.

After exploring the ship, we are introduced to the key members of the 143 strong crew that will be looking after us and the other 337 passengers on board for the next seventeen days. We are told that weather conditions will vary dramatically and suddenly during our journey with the consequence that, whilst we know that we heading for the continent of Antarctica and that we will be returning to Ushuaia, we don’t know where we might end up in between. The certainty of having to navigate the notoriously treacherous waters of Drake Passage was, however, real and immediate.

At around 620 miles wide, the passage that bears the name of its 16th century British explorer, marks the joining point of the Atlantic, Pacific and Southern Oceans. Combine this with a lack of wave resisting landmass plus high winds and you get the potential for nine metre high waves that create the infamous ‘Drake Shake’ experience.

The knowledge that these days the chances of a disaster are very slim is of little comfort when the view from the back of the boat is of a horizon that rapidly and repeatedly shifts from way down there to right up there. And there is no relief at night in bed where, if you do manage to fall asleep, you will be woken by a dream of falling to realise a matching reality.

During our 48 hour crossing, the quantity of passengers arriving for meal time ebbed and flowed depending on how many were confined to quarters as close as possible to a vomitorium. Many of those that did make it were a little green around the gills.

However, with the help of magic wrist bands and some good fortune, Pauline and I managed to avoid sea sickness but any smugness about health on my part was short lived as shortly after lunch on our first full day, my stomach gave up the fight with something unpleasant that had entered it in Ushuaia and the next 24 hrs were spent very close to the crapitorium… Perhaps the waiter at lunch had mind read what I was going to be writing about his town ☹️

The cabin TV keeps us up to date on progress and conditions

There is not a great deal to look at whilst at open sea but plenty to do on board in readiness for the forthcoming days of visiting Antarctica including wellie boot fitting, the distribution of the bright red jackets with brighter yellow hoods that we get to keep, learning the drill for making landings, learning the drill cleaning down after returning from landings, learning the strict dos and don’ts of what to do during the landings, learning about the wildlife that we might expect to see and learning about the history of those gritty explorers that first beat a path to the huge and desolate continent at the bottom of the world.

The other thing that this opening portion of the trip provided the opportunity for, of course, was to get to know who we were travelling with and work out who we might enjoy sharing time with and those whose prolonged company might just persuade us to stay on one of the islands to avoid.

The anticipation had been that we would be sharing our cruise mostly with Americans, Canadians, Australians and fellow Brits. Certainly, these breeds did make up the majority of people but the large amount of other countries represented was surprising and we had French, Danish, Polish, German, New Zealanders, Chilean, Mexican, Argentinian, Swedish, Indian and a group from Estonia who were here to enjoy the beach wedding of one of their party in a same sex wedding with a guy from the large group from Seattle.

Inevitably, some stood out: ( I mean no harm but really some people attract special attention without even trying )

The hairy hikers with mandatory caps, glasses and beards like Forest Gump after running across America

Mrs Where do I go? What do I do? Aaah! (There seemed to be a number of these that had infiltrated every nationality group. The comedy level was at its highest when two of them bumped into each other and a nuclear reaction of confusion ensued)

Mr Biggest Camera (to be fair it does have a very big zoom on it) and his son Pancake ( at least I think that is what you can see during his slack jawed eating habits)

Mr Captain Cunard (name any vessel on the planet and he has been on it and everywhere that the whole flotilla has collectively been to) and his wife Long Suffering. Him heard loudly at dinner patronising some Germans ‘we have curry because of our involvement with India. Why do you have it?’ and ‘oh well, I guess we are all the same really, if you go back far enough we are all Roman’ 🤦🏼‍♂️ Then later in attempting to whisper to Long Suffering but failing; ‘did they say that those two blokes were marrying each other? I thought that they were joking’.

Yeeha (not his real name), part of the expedition landings team: ‘ Hi, my name is Yeeha, I’m Chinese/American’ me ‘oh hello, my name is Rob, I’m Anglo Saxon English with a little bit of Welsh but if we go back far enough I guess we are all from Alkebulan’

Mr and Mrs Privileged and their daughter Over. He Chinese, Her American making the daughter, well I suppose, Chinese / American

EIGHT, NINE & TEN - Basically all of the Americans shouting in competition to be the most noticed

And

ELEVEN! Whose voice gets to a higher volume than anyone else’s. No need for tannoy announcements when she is around but helpful for knowing where to look for wildlife: ‘WHALES OFF THE STARBOARD BOW’

Clusters of the like minded inevitably form quickly so that a happy and comfortable co-existence for all is attained and each group can observe the deficiencies of the other groups whilst conveniently ignoring their own. (Apart from us of course as we are obviously perfect in every way 🙄). That is apart from the Where do I go? What do I do? Group who I think are still trying to find their cabins…

Spotting Killer Whales. We should be safe up here!

Keen to avoid the disappointment of another cancellation, we had deliberately under investigated the detail of what we might encounter on our polar expedition to allow it all to wash over us without any pre-conceptions. We did, however, take some time to check what clothing we would need to bring to cope with the varying weather conditions that were likely to come our way. Clearly, this was not the case for the guy that took his innocent nonplussed state to the extreme of waking up on the day of his departure and taking off to the airport with only his passport and the clothes that he happened to be standing in at that moment. The error of his ways became bone chillingly apparent when he arrived at the head of the queue for the token effort of vacuuming clothes that are to be worn for landings (seeds and viral disease like bird flu could be catastrophic to the local wildlife), only to be told that jeans are probably not the best things to have a substitute for the specified requirement of ‘waterproof and thermally lined trousers’.

We awoke on the morning of Monday 16th January to realise that the ship had stopped in calm waters and when we opened up our cabin curtains, we were treated to our first breathtaking view of the frozen continent. The Captain announced our arrival along with the news that apparently the journey across the Passage had been relatively calm measuring only around 5 on the sickter scale! Maybe we wouldn’t be so lucky on the way back but that was a full ten days away so who cares? All everyone wanted to do now was to put the learning to use and get on land!