14th – Crossing the Drake

Breakfast buffet was at 0800-0900 but no wakeup call had been planned. I set my alarm to 0730 but didn’t plan with my guy I shared the cabin with (who wasn’t the same as the one I had been sharing the hotel room with in Ushuaia) as he had already gone to bed when I returned last night. Luckily it turned out to not be a problem as he was already gone when I woke up.

The day was used for crossing the Drake so apart from a couple of lectures nothing had been planned. Before lunch we had a presentation on possible bird sightings with lists of what kinds we could have a chance of encountering on the trip. I quickly realized it was near impossible to get a good shot when combining the birds being fast, constant moving ocean in the background often getting the auto focus’ attention and the ship not being a stable platform. We also had a presentation on ice, the development of it and what kinds there are.

Black-browed albatross with a cape petrel in the background.

Lunch was had at 1200-1300 and shortly afterwards we had a presentation on Citizen Science, which basically can be translated to crowd-sourced science; a lot of projects that want assistance from civilians as they don’t have the resources themselves to collect all the necessary data. One example of the projects we did was, while coordinating when NASA’s weather satellites were above us, we (some) took photos of the clouds. When sending the photos to NASA they will be able to figure out how clouds look from below when the look in a specific way on the pictures they get from the satellites. Unfortunately barely 20-ish people showed up to the presentation out of 130-ish passengers, so the mandatory presentation on environment safety that was to be done afterwards was postponed. Instead we got to watch first episode of BBC’s Frozen Planet.

Southern giant petrel.

With the limited attendance there are quite a few people sensitive to the current conditions (though someone speculated that some just didn’t show up due to lack of interest). There is a bit of pitching and rolling going but nothing panic-inducing. Apparently, if you only have one of those at a time you generally cope much easier than if you have both of them combined (even when it isn’t that rough) which does seem to have pacified quite a few. The conditions are nothing like what I had expected after hearing all those horror stories about the Drake, it’s actually not bad at all – and this is considered “calm” in Drake terminology. I will admit that I am using a sea sick patch so that might have something to do with me not having any issues but I was not willing to take any chances, and I have no idea how I would have been if I hadn’t used it. I’d like to say I would have been fine but that’s easy to say when I haven’t tried it. At least I would have avoided the intense dry mouth, a common side effect of seasickness medication.

The ship's library. 

The bridge is open for quests when the crew doesn’t have much to do, i.e. when in open water, not navigating narrow straits, ice or in the process of docking etc. It’s an amazing thing and I ended up spending an hour or more just standing there looking out. With a visibility of 5-6 miles and nothing else here there wasn’t much to look at yet time passed quickly. While there I heard one of the crew members mention that we were navigating under Beaufort 4-5 conditions.

Weeee!