Last night ended very nicely and with calm seas until we left the Beagle Channel and headed out into the Drake Passage. For good reason, the Drake Passage is known as the most violent stretch of ocean in the world, more so than Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand (where we once had perfect seas) and the Bay of Biscay in Europe (where we have had awful seas on more than one occasion). But for rough seas, the Drake wins all the rewards, but this can vary greatly, thus the “Drake Lake” when it is uncharacteristically calm or the “Drake Snake (or Shake) when it is not. Knowing this, the Drake always factored into any discussions we had about sailing to Antarctica.
The cruise before immediately before ours was blessed with exceptionally calm seas on their return through the Drake from the Peninsula. So calm that they returned almost 10 hours ahead of schedule. We weren’t sure if this boded well for us (would it last?) or not (it probably won’t last). The calm didn’t last.
Shortly after midnight, just after getting dark, the seas began to get active, gentle swells at first but rapidly increasing in frequency and size. Looking outside in the middle of the night you could see that the swells were breaking just at or slightly above our cabin level on Deck 3, so roughly 25 feet or so. This puts the seas right away in our top 5 (or bottom 5!) at sea experiences. The heavy weather continued unabated throughout the night but didn’t appear to get much worse when we “woke” (Ed spent a lot of the night awake).
Cathy was now feeling the effects of mal de mer (this post is courtesy of your trusty reporter Ed at the keyboard) but usually feels better when she gets something in her stomach, so we planned to head to breakfast. Getting up and walking around the cabin, though, revealed somewhat of a problem since there was a small stream running from the balcony door through the cabin almost to the balcony door. Our cabin had sprung a seawater leak! Actually not all that worrisome since we knew this could be a factor when you book a balcony cabin a minimum distance above the waterline, since we wanted to be as low (and as mid-ship) as possible, knowing about the potential problems in the Drake.
So, off the breakfast we go, sharing a table with a couple from Connecticut who are one deck above us (and having no leak problems). Cathy only made it through about half of her toast before deciding to return to the cabin, lay down and try to get ahead of the seasickness. Ed was not yet feeling any effects, so he spent the next few minutes finishing his breakfast before heading back to the cabin. The restaurant is one deck below our cabin, on Deck 2, and there were a couple of real window washing swells while we were eating.
Well, those same swells made it up to Deck 3. When Ed got back to the cabin he found Cathy in the chair with water everywhere in the cabin, the stewardess mopping up and deck people arriving to extricate water from the carpet. While she was sitting there, a huge wave hit, demolishing the balcony furniture (which was beautiful faux wicker)—one of the chairs was crushed like it was paper—tearing the balcony separators from their moorings and flooding about 60% of the cabin carpet. It looked like a war zone outside with the collapsed furniture and the balcony separators swinging and banging in the high winds.
It is now 3 PM and the seas continue to rage. The sky has turned a brilliant blue from time to time, but pretty much once an hour or so a huge wave attacks our poor sad balcony (they have resorted to tying the balcony separators to the railing to keep them from banging) and finds its way into the cabin again. They have extracted the water completely twice (around 6-8 liters of water each time) but we are waiting for things to calm down to have them do it again. C
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