Drake Passage: 2 days at sea

We have been at sea now for 2 days, and counting. For some reason, I don’t remember the itinerary indicating this many days at sea - I probably glossed over that part of the brochure to get to the good stuff.

The Drake Passage is notorious for rough seas. It’s a place where 3 oceans - the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Southern - all come together in a contest to see how much chaos they can inflict upon passing ships. We are told that the Drake runs the gamut of two extremes: the relatively calm ‘Drake Lake’ and the more terrifying ‘Drake Shake’. We are somewhere closer to the Drake Lake version, but its enough rocking and rolling for me.

The days at sea are both action packed and painfully long. It has taken me a while to get my ‘sea legs’, but I do think it’s better than the first day aboard the ship. 

Quark lists out the day’s schedule of events, which includes everything from mandatory meetings (how to safely get in and out of the Zodiacs, parka and boot fittings and instruction), and talks given by the Expedition Team (the Quark team, not my friends and I who have been referring to ourselves as Expedition Team, too). 

The Quark team is an enthusiastic, knowledgeable group of scientists and historians who are ready to enhance our experience. We’ve had a lot of good conversations with Jean, our ornithologist, and Annie, our marine biologist who has a wicked eye to spot even the tiniest dolphin splash in the wide expanse of sea in front of us, at dusk. We’ve gone to presentations about Antarctica bird life, Cetaceans of the Southern Ocean, and the History of Antarctica Exploration. One of the team gave a talk last night about marine superstitions, which taught us to never whistle on the ship, or use certain words like ‘rat’ and ‘rabbit’. We are in 100% compliance with these instructions. 

We found out that there are inflatable kayak excursions available through a lottery system, so Matt and I put our names in the hat and we found out today that we secured a spot on one of the paddling excursions. 

Now all we have to do is get through the rest of these days at sea so we can finally get to the Continent. 

We were told that we should be seeing icebergs sometime soon. They run a contest where you guess the date and time you think the first iceberg will be sighted. I guessed that it would be today (Sunday, Feb 19) at 5:30 PM. I will be a lot happier about being on this ship once I see some sea ice. That will indicate we’re getting close!