Bouncing across the Drake Passage
Wednesday, 23 January: Drake Passage
Sleeping has been uncomfortable – sliding up and down the bed is a new experience, and works those core muscles in an entirely new way! The morning is grey and overcast, and 30-40 knot winds. This is the first morning I’m not on the Bridge before breakfast – lying horizontally seems preferable while the next dose of Kwell takes hold.
The sun starts to come out over lunch, and the barometer is rising - hopefully the swell will reduce over the next 12-24 hours. It’s taking its toll on passengers – the numbers at presentations and in the dining room keep dropping.
Our 2 sea days give me the opportunity to finish one book and start the next, catch up on this diary, and also start culling the 2,000+ photos that are in my Antarctic 2008 file. I’m determined to put no more than 300 onto a website – looking at one penguin from 5 different angles will not be for everyone!
It’s a fairly uncomfortable day for all of us, and I manage to make it to presentations, including a tour of the ship, although I pass on going into the engine room. One presentation this afternoon has been a film about the Peking, a 4 masted barque built in Germany in the ‘30s that sailed around Cape Horn in the ‘40s. One of the Peking’s crew took a camera on the journey and a documentary has recently been produced using his footage, with his voice describing the experience. The film shows the Drake Passage in full force, and with the decks awash with sea. Scotty tells us that the Peking is now in New York – I make a point of seeing it when I’m there the following week.
Dinner is a little quiet tonight - interestingly, there’s no soup on the lunch or dinner menus today – it just won’t stay in the bowls! Colin pulls out his guitar and we have some great music as we roll from side to side across the Drake.
Thursday, Drake Passage, Cape Horn and Beagle Channel
The wind has been dropping throughout the night, but the swell has lingered. There are white caps around and a full moon is still hanging high in a clear blue sky.
It’s becoming easier to move around the ship, and by midday, it is almost pleasant again. Albatross are soaring around us from bow to stern, and I see my first Wandering Albatross – stunning white bird with a wingspan of 4 meters.
At around 1:30pm, we’re making a bee-line for Cape Horn, hoping to round it as close as is possible. However the Chileans don’t allow ships closer than about 12 miles, so we keep our distance, too far out to see the famous lighthouse.
The day has been busy settling accounts and packing. We’ve given back our bright red Musto jackets, and I’ve left my “penguinised” gumboots on the ship for someone else to use on the next trip. But I wonder if the smells on the clothes I’ve worn around the penguins will attract the Beagles at Melbourne Airport!
As we come closer to the Beagle Channel we can see vivid green grasses on the hillsides and the breeze sends amazingly intense smells of pine forests and damp earth across the water to the ship – just wonderful.
Our anchorage, just inside the Channel, is sheltered and very beautiful, and at 10:30pm we experience our first real sunset in 13 nights. The night sky finally darkens sometime after midnight.
The Pilot boards the Ioffe at around 2:00am to take us into Ushuaia to berth at 6:30am. And so I’m awake very early to see this and to speak with John. Although I’ve managed to send a couple of short emails from the ship, this has not been the same as actually telling someone about it all – I’m not sure where to start!
It’s around 5:00am, and there are 3 of us on the fly bridge watching the sunrise as we sail down the Beagle Channel. My mobile finally has a signal, and my call to John is a garbled one describing a most beautiful sunrise with glorious colours of glowing pinks becoming reds. We slide into our berth at Ushuaia, and soon after breakfast are disembarking to begin our journeys home to Australia, UK, Ireland, US, Canada, Italy, New Zealand and Hong Kong – quite a collection of people.