At Sea - Drake Passage

A poor night's sleep - spent rocking and rolling about the bed and fighting with the duvet. But absolutely no 🤢. There are definitely fewer folk at breakfast this morning. The captain says that we are in for about 3-4 metre swell, getting worse as the day proceeds. We should arrive at Puerto Williams late tomorrow night. The Beagle Channel will mark the end of our 2 day crossing of the Drake Passage. We had a lecture from Maëva this morning about the Drake Passage ocean currents and why it is such a rough passage of sea. People talk about the "Drake Shake "or the "Drake Lake", but there is really no such thing as a calm crossing. There will always be a significant swell, which causes a lot of side to side rolling (which explains why Rosemary and I need cot sides on the bed) rather than up and down pitching. Maëva also shared the cheery fact that 20,000 people have lost their lives crossing the Drake Passage. Another fact is that Sir Francis Drake never crossed the Drake Passage.
Gulia then did a workshop about the food web. It's a complex web rather than a food chain with krill at its heart. And the krill depend on the photoplankton and as both are disappearing the whole ecosystem is perilous. There are no restrictions on fishing for krill in the Antarctic. It's used for omega fish oil, cosmetics, salmon farming and fertilisers. We then got looking at them in a bucket of seawater - trapped in the engine inlet filter. Had a look at them under the microscope too. All the time we were lurching from side to side. People took to crawling across the floor or pushing a chair across the carpeted floor as a rollator - worked well.
After lunch I lay peacefully on the cabin floor just going with the movement of the ship. Then went out to deck 7 to the wildlife watch with Ornithologist George and ORCA whale man Richard. Had a chat with Giuli - she's done the Drake Passage 16 times. She's off to Alaska next after she does survival training including rifle training in case she has to shoot a 🐻. She went to Belfast with the Maud and had her first date with her boyfriend over a Guinness 0.0 in a Belfast pub.
After dinner we had a talk from the British Antarctic Survey engineer that we picked up in Signy Island. He had loads of photos from his time in the 1990's. He spent a continuous 2.5 years there. The things they got up to skiing, water skiing, diving under the ice.
In the lounge as usual for our nightcap there was just Nick, Jan and me plus one other table with three folk. I think seasickness and the drowsiness of Stugeron has them all in their cabinsWeiterlesen