All Lake, No Shake

When we started planning this trip, the Drake Passage was the part that stood out as the big deal. Fortunately for us, our crossings of the Drake have both been quite gentle affairs, definitely on the Drake Lake end of the spectrum without any Drake Shake at all. Very good stuff.

The Drake is famous (or infamous) for wild seas and howling winds. Between about 40°S and Antarctica, there is almost no land and this allows winds and waves to build up uninterrupted around the globe — known as the “Furious Fifties” and “Screaming Sixties”

Add to this the massive Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), the strongest ocean current on Earth that flows through the Drake Passage, moving west to east around Antarctica, carrying massive amounts of water and the potential for really nasty sailing is right up there.

Typical sea states on a calm crossing (the Drake Lake) are waves of 6–10 ft (2–3 m) On a rough “Drake Shake” crossing they can be 3X that

Back in the day of sailing ships, the Drake was so notorious that sailors who survived a transit through the passage were allowed to wear a gold earring in the ear that faced land through their transit, the left ear for west to east and the right ear for east to west.

I have no plans for any ear piercings.

The weather forecast for tomorrow looks bad and our port call in Ushuaia, Patagonia is in doubt.

Mother Nature decides, we just complyRead more