Crossing the Drake Strait

Imagine huge, crisscrossing white-capped waves heaved, churned and frothed up by the Atlantic, Pacific and Southern oceans colliding below the tip of South America. Sixty-foot waves. Don't go there waves. Don't fall in. The water's so cold you're dead in four minutes. Picture the lifeboat on the ship: It's not the pleasant open boat with oars you see in the movies. It an orange submarine. It can be rolled over, dashed and smashed and keep it's huddled occupants alive. In the zodiac boats the drivers wear survival suits that keep water out and body temperature up for six hours. Survival in the Antarctic requires gear and planning. They warned us about crossing the Drake.

The ship took two days to cross the Drake Strait going from Tierra del Fuego to the Northern Peninsula of Antarctica. It was summer so the waves were 20-25 feet. Even the crew got seasick. I braced myself in my bunk with wedged in knees and elbows against the roll, pitch and yaw of the ship. It was interesting. You slide down and hit your feet on the bulkhead, then slide up and bump your head on the other one. In between the ship tosses you up and drops you with a little weightless floating that causes you to have to take a deep breath and hold it to keep your internal organs from jamming up against your lungs. If you try to take a seasick pill you throw it up. When you don't drink for two days, your urine turns the color and consistency of coca-cola syrup. As long as I stayed down I didn't feel sick. When I bent down to put on my shoes immediately I threw up.

It was too enticing that there were 25-foot waves to see. Taking barf bags, I headed for the upper decks. I threw up twice before getting out of my cabin, once on the stairs' lower landing, and again at the top landing, where the ship's doctor was dispensing seasick medicine in liquid form. You hold out your lower lip and she puts a few blue drops in and gives you crackers. I continued to throw up crackers, then bile, every twenty minutes. This is not like being sick. I felt fine in between and even while throwing up. The nausea hits suddenly, you throw up, then you have twenty minutes to do whatever you want. Barf bags were strategically positioned every few feet around the ship.

Seeing the waves was cool. They were moving, racing mountains, as though the Appalachians were to sweep across America at fifty miles per hour. The effect of the waves inside the ship was exciting. The ship groaned and creaked with bangs and thumps and things breaking above and below you or in the next room. Stabilizing tanks of water in the hold sloshed and counter-sloshed. Books flew off the library shelves and landed entirely across the room. People hanging on to welded-down tables and seated in wide-legged chairs pitched to the deck. The waves smashed against the windows on the ship's third deck. When you walked, you had to, absolutely had to have a hand, preferably both hands, holding onto the rails. The crew warned us not to hold onto doors -- doors move. A few people hit their heads, broke arms, hurt ankles. The projector in the lecture room was tied down in a chair that was roped to poles and latches from three directions. The deck of the ship was in constant motion, pitching like a steep hill on San Francisco, then in seconds angling over to pitch as much in the opposite direction. Two weeks after I got home, floors still seemed to move.

In Antarctica, the waters were glass. Of course, people dreaded the return trip across the Drake, but we lucked out, there were only the more usual summer-sized 10-foot waves, and we had sea legs by then.