Cruising the Drake Passage

When I was a young girl, I was always attracted to adventure travel books from the library. This attraction has continued into my adult life, primarily focusing on travels that included mountain climbing, jungle hikes and sailing/boating adventures. When Jeff and I got married, he questioned this literary interest of mine. He asked, “do you want to do these things or do you just like to read about them?”. I assured him that it was the latter.
So, here we are today crossing the Drake Passage on our way to Antarctica. Now, it is correct that we are on a very nice cruise ship, but doesn’t matter what kind of vessel you’re traveling on, you are still rolling and pitching enough that you have hold on when you move anywhere and those movements are not always your choice (taking a shower is particularly challenging).
The Drake Passage is the waterway between the tip of South America/Cape Horn and the Antarctic peninsula. It is the convergence of 3 oceans with no land mass to impede the Antarctica circumpolar current. It is 690 miles wide and 11,000 feet deep and is the roughest ocean in the world. Ships that are too big for the Panama Canal have to make the arduous journey around Cape Horn to access either the Pacific or Atlantic Ocean. Looking for the safest area of passage, the latitudes are referred to as the “roaring forties”, the “furious fifties” and the “screaming sixties”.
Having said all that, we’re told that this particular passage wasn’t too bad. Since the wind has been howling and we’ve been bouncing off some walls, I’m not sure that I want to know what a “bad” passage is. We’ll head back north in a few days-hopefully we’ll be as lucky.Read more