En Route to Antarctica - The Drake Passage

Danny Catt — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 12:17:36 -0700

Raging Seas Crossing the Drake Passage En Route to Antarctica

The Drake Passage, between the southern tip of South America and the Antarctic Peninsula is famous the world over for being one of the roughest sections of ocean on the planet. We left Ushuaia in the afternoon and motored our way down the smooth waters of the Beagle Channel (named after the ship that Charles Darwin was aboard on his famous journey around the world).

The Russian Expedition Ship, Professor Multanovskiy

The waters of the Beagle Channel were smooth and most of the passengers on the Professor Multanovskiy, a Russian research vessel converted for expeditionary travel, were asleep wondering what the famous Drake would give us during the night. Well, it did not take long to find out! Soon after leaving our pilot behind at the end of the Beagle Channel, we entered the Drake. The winds were fierce, over 40 knots (1 knot = 1 nautical mile per hour; one nautical mile = 1.15 statute miles), with swells and crashing waves up to 8 metres high. For most of the passengers the experience was a new (and very unpleasant) one. In the morning, while the waves and swell continued to hit the Professor Multanovskiy, the ship was quiet (a ghost ship in fact). About 40 of the 46 passengers were in their bunks with sick bags at the ready. What a horrible feeling to be sea sick.

Luckily for me I was okay. For some reason I am one of the lucky ones who did not suffer the agony of the swells.

Why is the Drake so rough? If you were to look at a map of the southern hemisphere, or better yet take a globe and balance it on the North Pole, you would see that Antarctica is a continent surrounded by ocean (this is contrast with the High Arctic which is primarily frozen ocean surrounded by continents).

Map of Antarctica, Showing the Distance Between South America and the Antarctic Peninsula

The distance between the southern tip of Africa and Antarctica is huge as is the distance from Australia and New Zealand to the southern-most continent. But, if you were to look at the southern tip of South America, Cape Horn, and measure the distance to the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, you would see that although it is 1000 km from land to land this is still the shortest distance from any of the continents to Antarctica – a sort of bottle neck. Add into that equation the world’s largest oceanic current that circles Antarctica in a clock-wise direction (the Antarctic Circumpolar Current) as well as the waters in the Pacific that are trying to squeeze eastward through that same narrow section of ocean, the Drake Passage, and you have the makings of a wild and ferocious section of ocean. And that is just what it is!

Because I had the good fortune of not feeling sea sick I enjoyed thoroughly the opportunity to watch the seabirds, including albatrosses and petrels, glide above the swells. The two most common species seen were the Black-browed Albatross and the Grey-headed Albatross.

Black-browed Albatross, Drake Passage

Grey-headed Albatross, Drake Passage

Catt-Trax 2 - Drake Passage

En Route to Antarctica - The Drake Passage