Day Eleven and Twelve - Drake again

On the evening of the 30th The Drake woke up and wanted to share with us what we missed going through it on the first two days. We’re taking 10 – 20’ tall swells with the occasional 30’ set. I'm writing this from the observation deck. At times when the boat drops into the bottom of a swell, the boat is literally covered by walls of water to the left and right before we pop back up on a high end of a swell.

So many people are sick this morning. When I went to bed on the 29th the hallway had tons of barf bags lined up for anyone to use. This morning, they’re all gone. I woke up to the chair at my desk flipping down the entire length of the cabin before coming to rest at the main door.


Now I know why chairs in the dining hall are strapped down


From talking to some of the crew that have worked on the other ships, our boat does the Drake the best. The other ice breaker – Kapitan Khlebnikov – sways so badly that no one goes through the channel without throwing up for two days solid each day, due to the shape of the bottom of the boat. But we are making good time and should be out of this crazy stuff by 4pm tonight. I’m so happy that we didn’t have to do this kind of swells at all on the southbound leg. This boat is interesting how it moves in high seas. It obviously rotates up and down. It also rotates to the left and right. Finally, it moves linearly right and left. Put it all together and you can imagine how people get sick. The higher you are up from the ocean the more profound these movements become. This is a trip where you want to be low and in the dead center of the boat if you want to minimize the amount of movement your body will feel.

From Antarctica

From Antarctica

From Antarctica