After successfully leaving port in the Falklands Sunday night, we headed south toward the South Shetland Islands and the northernmost part of Antarctica, Elephant Island. If you are familiar with the story of the famed explorer of the early 1900’s, Sir Ernest Shackleton, and the failed 1914 expedition – but miraculous rescue of his entire crew – to the South Pole, you have heard of Elephant Island. If you haven’t read the stories of Shackleton, please consider doing so. You can get a sense of the challenge as you read the advert he placed for the crew for the trip.
On December 5, 1914 they sailed in the HMS Endurance from South Georgia Island in the South Atlantic Sea for Antarctica. The ship was trapped in the ice and drifted for ten months before being crushed by the ice pack.
The team drifted on ice floes for another five months before escaping the ice and making it to Elephant Island, where Shackleton and five others started an impossible journey across 800 miles of dangerous ocean in a small whale boat. After 16 days they landed on the south shore of South Georgia Island, made the first land crossing of the island and found the base where they started the expedition. Four months later after four different attempts, Shackleton made it back to his crew and rescued them all. The stories of his leadership, insightful guidance of his team members, and extension beyond all physical and mental limitations to save all 28 men, are instructional and inspiring. And as a footnote, in 2022, 107 years after she sank and on the exact day of the 100th anniversary of Shackleton’s funeral, the HMS Endurance was found, 10,000 feet down on the bottom of the Weddell Sea. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60662541
But back to 2024, where once again, the weather is impacting our plans (it seems the last few posts have been about weather – but that is obviously an important factor in sailing – especially in this part of the world). The Captain held a talk at 10:00 this morning to explain, complete with weather charts, what is expected to occur. The bottom line is that the weather is getting worse, and we still have to cross the Drake Passage. We will cross this 600 mile wide gap between the tip of South America and the Peninsula of Antarctica both going to and returning from Antarctica. It is known as the most treacherous stretch of water in the world, from roughly the 40th through the 60th parallels. With no land mass to break the strong winds, references are often made to the “roaring forties, furious fifties, and screaming sixties” (parallels). While the crossing can be calm and smooth – known as “the Drake Lake”, it is more often extremely turbulent, known as “the Drake Shake”. It appears we will experience a good bit of the shake going south with sustained wind speeds of 65 mph, 24 foot waves, and significant swells. Again, being in a somewhat larger ship will lessen the impact.
Perhaps these maps will give you a little sense of where we are headed. The first is a map from Shackleton’s days of the Continent of Antarctica as a whole. You can see the Peninsula to the far left and at the tip of that are the South Shetland Islands with Elephant Island marked at the end.
The next is a map of just the Peninsula area including the Islands. You can see Elephant Island (looks something like the head of an elephant) at the top, and Deception Island – nearly a circle – just above the word “DE” in the Spanish name of that body of water between the Islands and the Peninsula “MAR DE LA FLOTA” (with red circles around each).
The decision has been made to travel south for a bit longer, then change to a southwest heading to cross the Drake Passage and make for one of the southernmost islands in the chain, Deception Island. Hopefully the strong front heading toward us from the west will blow through behind us, but there is more weather to dodge and traverse as we sail tonight. If all goes as planned, we should roll our way into the polar region around 11:00 p.m. (below the 60th parallel), cruise through the night, and reach the “slow-down zone” around 10:00 a.m. where we slow to 10 knots (11.5 mph) due to possible whales. Woohoo!!!
You can see the original plan crossed out, with a new line showing the newly planned route. The dates are written European style – month first then date.
Once we “shelter” behind Deception Island the winds will reduce to 30 mph gusting to 40 with 10 foot waves. A walk in the park – just not all on flat land.
Some of you may be bored with this but check out the chart below. The black dot to the right represents the ship’s location. Generally speaking, the colors depict the weather conditions with the bright greens and blues being good, the orange where we are worse, going down to red, pinkish, blue, and purple – with blue and purple being, in the words of the Captain, “you don’t want to be there”. The lines represent milibars in barometric pressure, and the combination of winds and pressure define what we may be familiar with in terms of tropical storms and hurricanes. The Captain stated that in order to have a hurricane the pressure must be down to 980 with wind speeds of 74 mph. The winds in the southern hemisphere flow clockwise and the closer together those milibar lines are, the worse the winds. The low pressure systems are moving west to east, which means that what is coming toward us are blue and purple colors. The pressure where we currently are is 973, and dropping.
Even I can see that “we do not want to be there”, so Elephant Island is out, and the race to shelter is on! We can’t stock up on bread and milk like we do in the South for a snow storm, but we are making do with chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin cookies, in case the 100+ steps to the elevator is too difficult. Shackleton would be amazed at our hardiness.
And we are amazed at your hardiness in sticking with us on this journey. Hopefully the coming views will be worth the wait. Many blessings and fair sailing to you all.